I lived in Padova, Italy, in 2015-2016. It’s difficult to
believe, but it has already been 3 years since I moved to Munich! I’ve been
back to Italy a few times, and now, during a weekend of cycling along the Adige
River, in a bout of nostalgia, I decided to write a blogpost about all the
things I miss about living in Italy.
Up until now, I’ve lived in 5 different countries, on 3
different continents, and travelled in many more. Living in any country has
both pros and cons. I don’t need to think too much about the con of living it
Italy, which can be summarised in one word: Bureaucracy. It’s not that
bureaucracy can’t be a problem in other places. In Germany, it took me months
to convince the bureaucrats to pay me a postdoc salary, because the formal
requirement for being in this salary class is having a masters degree, and it
was not clear to them that having a Bachelor with Honours and a PhD from
Australia is equivalent or superior to a European masters degree. In Italy,
unfortunately, the bureaucracy becomes very complicated when money is involved.
There is a strong tendency for mistakes to happen, if they lead to you losing
money. Figuring out what went wrong normally involves going around in circles
and becoming more and more confused with every person you talk to. Such
bureaucratic things, unfortunately, leave a disproportionately strong impression,
because dealing with them is normally the first and the last thing to do upon
moving. For example, after I moved out of my flat in Padova, the electricity
company continued to take money from my account, but tripled the amount. After
a lot of effort, and still no idea how this actually happened, I got some of
the money back and they stopped charging me.
But this blog post is about the nice things in Italy, of
which there are a lot. I’ll start with an obvious one: The weather. As far as
Germany goes, the weather in Munich is not too bad. However, days when I can
wear my summer clothes from Australia and Italy, and when I really feel like
taking an ice cream or going for a swim, are rare. Central European friends
tell me I’m spoilt.
A second obvious point is food. With time, I’ve found
various places throughout Munich where one can get authentic Italian food (and
coffee!). However, there is a whole culture around food in Italy that just
cannot be recreated in Germany. Coffee is often drunk in bars, such as the one
that was just next to my office in Via Venezia in Padova. The bar tender knew
me, and would start preparing my coffee the second I’d enter the bar. When
going into a bar in Italy, chances are very high that you’ll get a good coffee.
In Germany, when I travel to a new city, I got into the habit of googling “good
coffee places in…”. If you don’t do your research in advance, chances are very
high you’ll end up getting a cappuccino with long life milk!
In Padova, there are three squares around the famous
historical Palazzo della Raggione. Under the palazzo itself are corridors with
lots of shops which, in other part of the world, would be called Delicatessen,
but which in Italy is just normal food. Cheeses, meats, fresh pasta, fish,
sundried tomatoes, bakeries… For me, living in Italy has ruined soft cheeses in
non-cheese countries. Twice a week, on the surrounding squares, there are
markets. On two of the squares, they sell clothes and various plastic things,
on the third square they sell fruits and vegetables. Every Saturday morning, I
would walk to the fruit market, 10 minutes’ walk from my flat, and buy several
big bags full of fruits and vegetables. Soon, I found my favourite stands. The
fruit stand I liked was run by an elderly couple: the wife called me “stella”
(star), and the husband “tesoro” (treasure). Whenever I was away for a couple
of weeks, they would ask me about my holiday.
Leading on directly from food, I come to the third thing
I miss: Spritz. I don’t mean the drink: it has become immensely popular in
Germany, and you can get it at any bar (though for 3x the price you would pay
in Padova). Drinking Spritz is not the same if it doesn’t happen within the
surroundings of a historical Italian city. On the aforementioned three squares
in Padova, markets are held during the daytime. Around the time of sunset, the
stalls close, the umbrellas above them are folded, trucks hosting them are
swiftly driven off the squares. Instead, the bars and cafés at the edge of the
squares pop up a sea of small tables and foldable chairs. This, in turn,
attracts people, who sit down and start enjoying their before-dinner drinks.
The streets are alive with people socialising, drinking spritz’, and enjoying
themselves. In Munich, night life tends to finish around 10pm, though I like to
think that there is some Italian influence in this southern part of Germany.
People of Munich like to go to Beergardens, which are outdoor places with
benches and a bar where one can get beer and sausages, sometimes a huge piece
of meat called “Schweinehaxe”.
From the lively atmosphere in the historical streets of
Padova, I will segue to my next point: Decorations. Italian cities and villages
are beautiful: historical churches, decorated houses, little alleyways,
cobblestone streets. All of these exist for historical reasons, of course,
unlike in Australia and Germany, where for other historical reasons buildings
tend to be new and the streets broad and straight. (Quadratisch, praktisch,
gut.) In addition, there are a lot of little things that make the cities and
landscapes even more beautiful. On most bridges, you will find flower pots with
colourfully blossoming flowers. If you pass a vineyard, you will often find
rose bushes at the end of every row of vine. In Padova, the famous Prato della
Valle, the biggest oval square in Europe, is decorated throughout the year. In
the centre of the oval is a fountain. During the winter, it is dry: a large
pole is put in the middle, with chains of light going from its top to the walls
of the fountain, giving the illusion of a huge Christmas tree. To extend the
Christmas feel to other modalities, there were loudspeakers, installed inside
of every trash can on the square, singing Christmas songs.
All in all, the lifestyle in Italy is more relaxed than
in many other countries. This is the fourth thing I miss about Italy, though it
is a double-edged sword. People walk more slowly in Italy than in Australia or
Germany, often enjoying a cigarette at the same time. In combination with the
small alleyways, this created some challenges for overtaking people during my
daily walk to work. The relaxed lifestyle is what makes it possible to sit on
the square and enjoy its atmosphere and a spritz. The decorations would not be
there if people did not have enough time to (a) put them up and (b) enjoy them.
The flip-side of the coin is, for example, the different perception of punctuality.
Meeting with a friend, it can happen that they send you a message, saying they
will be 10 minutes late. You’re glad they let you know and get to the meeting
place 10 minutes later than initially agreed, only to spend another half hour
waiting. This is technically not a problem if you know not to take it
personally: you bring a book, and enjoy a coffee or prosecco until they come.
However, this requires a change in mindset: in Australia and Germany, such
delays (by colleagues or friends) may be interpreted as a sign of disrespect. I
got used to this new perception of punctuality in some ways. When I met with
colleagues from Australia at a conference, they invited me to come along for
dinner at 7:30. I arrived around 8-ish, and was surprised that everyone had
already ordered. In work life, I did not learn to balance this approach with a
busy schedule: when meeting Person B one hour after Person A, and Person A
would come 50 minutes late, I would cut them off and leave after 10 minutes, so
I’d be in time for my meeting with Person B (who would often come late, too).
Still, the charm of this mentality became evident to me when I went to a
conference in Vicenza, after having already moved away from Italy. A colleague
was late to a meeting. She did not offer an excuse, but an explanation: “I took
a wrong turn, and ended up on the top of a hill. The view from there was so
beautiful!”
The fifth thing I miss about Italy is speaking Italian. Before
I came to Italy, I was refreshing my high-school Italian by reading Pinocchio
and writing out and memorising words and phrases which I thought could be
useful. When I arrived in Padova, my Italian was not good enough to communicate
about anything but the very basics. Contrary to my expectations, I found that
people were very tolerant of my broken Italian. When people on the street
realised that speaking to me in Italian was useless, they would start waving
their arms and listing all of the English words that they knew. An Italian
friend explained that Italians just love to communicate: and if they can’t do
this in their native language, they will find another way. In restaurants,
shops, streets, and even at the doctor’s practice, it should not be taken for
granted that there will be someone who speaks English. In Padova, when
registering as a resident, I needed to speak Italian. Despite the difficulty of
the bureaucracy – I went to the office 4 times, and each time, I got different
lists of documents that I need to bring, in original and copy – the clerks were
very friendly and always complimented me on my Italian.
The last thing I miss might come as a surprise to
people who know Italy mostly through the stereotypes: It’s the train network. After
living in Australia, I took any opportunity to do day- or weekend-trips, and as
I didn’t have a car, trains were my main way of travelling. Contrary to the
stereotypes, I found they were mostly on time, and I never had any major
delays. I would not say that the German train system, the Deutsche Bahn,
compares favourably to Italy.
The main Italian train company, TrenItalia, has a network
of fast trains (the freccias), and slow trains (regionale or regionale veloce).
There is also a competitor company, Italo, which offers fast connections
between bigger cities. The Freccia Rossa (literally translated: “red arrow”)
can travel at speeds up to 300 km/h. For shorter trips, it’s much cheaper to
take the Regionale, which can be either the standard line, where the train
stops in every village, or a Regionale Veloce, which stops only in the bigger
places. Taking the train from Padova to Venice, the Regionale Veloce took the
same amount of time as the Freccias, but was about 3 times cheaper. With the
regional train, a daytrip from Venice to Padova was cheaper than a return trip
for the metro from the place where we live to the city centre of Munich.
The train network allowed me to travel both to bigger
cities (Naples, Milan, Bologna, Florence) and smaller towns (Trieste, Treviso,
Monselice, Ferrara). I went to Venice often enough, so that towards the end of
my stay in Italy, I could walk around for a whole 10 minutes before getting
completely lost. Luckily, there is a direct connection between Munich and
Padova, which offers amazing views of the Austrian Alps. I took this train the
very first time I came to Padova, which was in January. Right after the station
at the border between Austria and Italy, the train goes through a tunnel. The
tunnel, as I understand, divides the north-facing and the south-facing part of
the Alps. On the Austrian side, the sky was grey, the ground covered with snow.
As soon as we got out of the tunnel, the sky was blue, the grass was green. “This
must be a good sign!” I thought to myself at that time.
