And after all this, you'll still love it like I do

A Survival Guide for those that want to visit Italy:
things to know before you visit the land of pizza, pasta, and ecclesiastical fervor:

1. It’s dirty. Filthy dirty. The kind of dirty that makes you long for a pouring rain and a bottle of Lysol. Trash litters the streets even though there are countless workers in green striped outfits walking around with plastic broom or the old-fashioned rush brooms. An empty beer bottle can always be found within three feet of a trashcan. Wrappers and bottles and broken glass adorn the streets. Street sweepers continually roam the streets, stirring up the trash and re-depositing it right back in the same spot.

2. It smells. I’ve tried to encapsulate all of the things Italy smells like before, but here’s a short list for your viewing pleasure. Italy smells like diesel and yeast, mold and salami, dank air and dog shit. It smells like rich chocolate, rotting pears, piss, and soap. It smells like thousands of years of human skin cells accumulating on the walls, and the burnt rubber of wheels, and the sharp bite of radicchio rotting in the sun. It smells like fetid water, leather hides, and the tang of cheese. It’s a terrifying smell: human, dying, ethereal.

3. Its cities are the loudest on earth. The clang and bustle of India might come close, but Rome has been declared Europe’s loudest city. All day and all night Vespas and Harleys rip up and down the cobblestones street, making a sound that’s like a swarm of angry bees gone mad on crack. People yell into their cell phones on trains, in taxis, at dinner. Music blares from every café (often American music, techno-ized). Children have one level: thunderous. Conversation has another level: deafening. Pile on top of that church bells and dogs barking and pot clanging and door slamming and police-ambulance-carabinieri sirens blaring and pipes whooshing and door being perpetually slammed and you have a typical quiet day in Italy.

4. The tourists are overrunning the place. I have a lot of room to talk, but we can’t even get near the major sites without having a panic attack. There are pasty-faced tourists clutching maps and guidebooks massed at every street corner. You can’t turn a corner without running into a phalanx of tourists, all following their guide who is holding aloft the ubiquitous Burberry Umbrella, metal pole with red handkerchief tied at the top, or simply, strangely, just their hand with a book in it. Once I saw a guide holding aloft a book that said something that could be translated as “The Night Pleasures of Rome”. I guess she gets bored while waiting for her charges to quit gaping at the huge marble hunks in front of them.

5. They like children. Too much. Clare is regularly offered hard candy, pastries, and (the latest infraction) a huge lump of marzipan rolled in sugar right before whatever meal we have just ordered. Occasionally she’s offered a regular dinner roll when we’re out shopping, but more often than not, it’s something she shouldn’t eat (choking hazard), can’t eat (health hazard) or plain isn’t interested in (marinated shrimps, unsalted crackers, etc.).

6. They also have very strong ideas about children. They won’t serve them cold milk (bad for health) or skim milk (bad for brain). But they will however, offer them a Coke or a Sprite. They hate to see them barefoot or without socks. They hate to see them exposed to the wind. They don’t think you should take them out if it even sounds like it might rain this week. They won’t leave them alone if they’re cute, even if that means hovering at your table long after you’ve exchanged the appreciative smiles, made the kid say hello and how are you in their language, and politely tried to get back to eating your meal before the kid implodes from boredom. They will pat their head, pinch their cheeks, and steal their nose long after the child has stopped enjoying it, while you are trying desperately to eat a hot meal and simultaneously, surreptitiously, fend off this stranger from your now-crying child.

7. They care not for their history and their monuments. It may seem like they do, and they be indignant if you suggest otherwise, but everyone around here knows that the monuments and the famous buildings are kept in repair because it brings in the tourists. All the statues and facades that are covered in scaffolding are being repaired to bring in tourist dollars. Left to the Italians, they’d suffer the same fate as the statues in the Borghese Gardens: Dante is noseless and wears permanent marker lipstick. A magnificent lion has blue spray-paint toenails and hundreds of names penned all over his body. The marble ponies have crude penises painted on them. Left to the Italians, Italy would be spray-painted and defaced as far up each wall as the human body could reach. It’s sad, disgusting, and defiant.

8. Inserting yourself in traffic is a game of roulette where gun is always loaded. Both chambers are cocked, ready, and bound to go off. Green lights mean go as fast as you can, watch for the Vespas clipping your fender, and swerve all over the street, honking loudly. Yellow means go faster, so you can avoid the ultimate insult of the red light, which is merely a suggestion. Red lights seldom are heeded, and usually if there’s someone in the poorly painted crosswalk, they find themselves dodging cabs and bikes and BMW’s bearing down on them. The key is to find a very old lady and offer to walk her across. The cars almost always stop. Almost.

(We saw a guy very nearly get killed yesterday. A Mercedes knocked him off his Motorcycle in the middle of one of Rome’s busiest intersections… you know, the one with no lights, no lane lines, no crosswalks (but with people crossing) and mayhem of busses, cabs, and bikes. The offended man was outraged, limped exaggeratedly around clutching his leg, took off his helmet and shook it at the driver, who shook his fist back in return. Ten minutes later they were still exchanging insurance information. Twenty minutes later they were leaning on the trunk of the Mercedes, talking animatedly. I told Tom that if this hadn’t broken up in ten more minutes I swear they’d go for coffee at the local bar and reminisce like brothers. They left 30 minutes later after waving off the local police from the wrecked bike and bent car. Only in Italy.)

9. They love the idea of religion. Churches sprout from every odd corner and nuns can be seen dodging Vespas and drinking mineral water. The priests, or priests in training from all over the world, are absurdly gorgeous, and more than once I caught myself giving a sidelong glance to a man of the cloth without knowing it. I found myself feeling absurd the other day when we stopped in a religious supply store to ferret out some kitschy stuff to send home to appreciative friends. Amongst the glow-in-the-dark Jesus figurines, the cheap plastic beads to make rosaries of every color and class, pot-metal saint charms, melamine plates with the present pope smiling in Technicolor, pope-eners (bottle openers with the present pope on one side and JPII on the other), pope nail clippers, and about a thousand incarnations of Mary surrounded in rainbow light, there was me: with a handful of Marys for Michelle Banuelos, two pope-eners, and the nail clippers, trying to walk discreetly by four nuns and a couple of altar boys to pay for my kitsch. Surely they see these objects for what they have turned out to be: made in Korea or China, cheap, hauntingly sad in their intent and purpose, and laughable. It almost seems sacrilege (to ME!) to have something so gaudy and second-rate try to represent a religion that proclaims to be rich in purpose and reward.

10. Religion is worn like Ferragamo. Insanely gorgeous women with miles of cleavage will adorn the valley of their breasts with a conspicuous gold cross. They will wear designer stilettos and designer tight skirts and designer tank tops to visit their cathedral, stopping at the double doors to toss a sweater over their immaculately tanned shoulders, as though God would be offended by their clavicles, but somehow not their sculpted derrieres. More than once I have seen them hiss at a tourist who forgot the protocol and somehow entered the church without making themselves “decent”, as though there is a dress code to stand on holy ground and gawk at the glorious art. Two youngish Italian women wearing tight Fendi and little else have hissed at me. One hissed and threw a sheer scarf over her bare shoulders as she tossed me a look. I was wearing pants and a capped-shoulder top (almost a tank top). Her uncovered legs flashed in the sun as she crossed the magically-lit cathedral and sank to pray at an altar, the soles of her expensive shoes turned up into the sun, her naked toes showing their glitter polished nails.

11. Pronunciation is key. Unlike in America, where we are used to immigrants and tourists and émigrés butchering our language, where we simply hear an approximation of a word and guess at the rest, Italians simply can’t understand you if you don’t put the right accent on the right syllable. Every syllable is pronounced in Italian, making it a guttural, rhythmic, and endless-sounding language. Their sentences have no apparent beginning and no audible end. If you approximate they give you a quizzical look and shrug. (The shrug, it seems, says everything.) Then they try a variation, something which sounds exactly like what you just said, just faster and with more lilt. You nod and they say “Alora! Why didn’t you say so!” I did, you think, and you say it exactly the same way again. “Yes, that’s it!” they’ll cry, slapping you on the arm. You’ll leave Italy bruised from trying the language on: an imperfect fit on your uncultured tongue.