What would be Italy without style?

Make sure you don’t get caught!

Gotta love the baggage claim signs at FCO…

Italy is romantic, sure. But Italy is far too romanticized, too.

While the Italy virgin surely holds hopes of evening strolls along calm waterways, perhaps stealing a kiss or two in the shadows of the Colosseum, or luxury shopping down Via Montenapoleone, to enjoy these things, it is almost comical the number of inconveniences that Italians seem to intentionally bestow upon foreign visitors.

Maybe it’s Italian pride, I don’t know. But I don’t possibly understand how urban planners, politicians, and the like can even fathom some of the design elements of Italy’s infrastructure that just make it impossible to navigate.

I’m no inexperienced traveler, either, by any stretch. With 43 countries under my belt, including four previous visits to this very country, I tend to be pretty street smart. I often rely on public transportation, I have a good sense of the layout of a city from just a quick glance at a map, and I manage to find my way. And yet in my last visit, which consisted of just 16 hours, I encountered not one, not two, and not three, but four massive inconveniences.

First, there is an express bus from Roma’s Fiumicino International Airport to Vatican City and Termini Station. Apparently. Despite having no fewer than 50 massive advertisements plastered throughout the arrivals area, finding the stop for it is virtually impossible. While it says “Bus Station No. 1” on the advert, it does not specify any operating hours, and does not give any additional instructions as to where this supposed Station No. 1 is. And when you follow the signs within the airport, the one that says “Shuttle” refers to a within-the-airport shuttle (despite the Express bus to Termini being called “Shuttle” as well). So upon that failure, I walked down to the “Local Bus Station,” only to find distance buses most of which do not go to Roma. The ones that did specify Roma on the departure screen were for the next day, and it was only about 23:00 at the time.

Upon making it on Trenitalia from Fiumicino to Roma Tiburtina Station, the timetable for the Metro specified that the last train leaves just after midnight. I was there about 10 minutes prior to that, only to find a roped off entrance area. This made me depend on a taxi, who typed my address into his GPS. I saw the route pop up, which was just two stops and about five minutes on the Metro, and it was about 3km away. About 20 minutes and 15 turns later, I arrived at my destination—with a 17 euro charge. I screamed at the man in English which he didn’t understand for driving me in a circle, making wild gestures, so he knew I had been here before, and he agreed to 10 euro, which I paid and left. Just expect it—if you don’t speak Italian, you will get ripped off by a taxi driver. If you don’t, it’s your lucky day. In my case, it was just funny that he insulted my intelligence by typing the address into the GPS, and continuously ignoring the suggested route as I watched the machine recalculate, and recalculate, and recalculate. He probably should have made sure I couldn’t see that, anyway, and may have gotten a few more euros out of me.

Fast-forward to the next day. I went to enter the Metro for the two-stop ride over to Tiburtina to catch a 14:03 train back to Fiumicino. When I was near the station, I realized I forgot something important at my friend’s flat, and literally sprinted back, about 800m, to grab it. I got on the Metro, and arrived at Tiburtina station at about 13:57…a semi-comfortable 6 minutes to make the connection. Except that at Tiburtina, as you exit the Metro, the overground trains are one direction, and the only place in the entire station you can purchase Trenitalia tickets is the other direction. Without a sign informing you of that, of course. So in my instinct, I just left Metro and walked towards my track platform, passing about 200m of wide-open hallway. And not a single automated ticket machine. In Italy, you cannot purchase tickets on board, either….so my only option to avoid a 100 euro penalty was to run back past the Metro, to the other side of the station where the ticket booth was. I saw a bank of about 20 automated machines, and was just dumbfounded why they could not put a single one of those machines either at the Metro exit, or in the direction of the train platforms.

I honestly believe that Italians do things this way just to laugh at foreigners…but that’s just my two cents.

Since we’ve got the whole February romance theme going on, here’s something courtesy of Fiumicino Airport!

Everyone knows about Italy’s male chauvinist reputation. Whether it is justified or not, every girl who mentions a plan to visit Italy will hear the same advice from those around her: Be careful around the aggressive men.

Having spent enough time here, I know it is pretty much harmless–lots of hooting and hollering but very rarely physical action. So while you may not have to worry for your safety, you, attractive woman, will have to accept being looked at like a juicy, t-bone steak.

So goes the reputation, anyway–a reputation that Italy has been trying to shake off for some time now.

And re-electing Silvio Berlusconi as Prime Minister for a fourth time in this month’s election (24-25 February) will not be the way to do that. Could you imagine Berlusconi even having so much as a chance to be elected in a place like politically-correct America?

If I recall correctly, Bill Clinton was nearly impeached from office for having an affair with a legal adult, despite his excellent track record in doing his job.

Yet, Mr. Berlusconi has closed the gap with the current frontrunner, Pier Luigi Bersani, and still has a shot to win the election (see Reuters article on the latest news here).

Let’s recall a couple of Silvio’s greatest examples of chauvinist buffonery:

• In the run-up to the 2008 Italian general election, Berlusconi said that female politicians from the right were “more beautiful” and that “the left has no taste, even when it comes to women.” It should be noted that he won the election.
• Around the same time, he criticized the composition of Spain’s Council of Ministers as being too “pink” because it was composed of an equal number of men and women.
• He compounded those comments by saying that Spain’s composition would be impossible in Italy, given the “prevalence of men” in Italian politics.
• And finally, let’s not forget the fact that he paid a 17-year-old girl an alleged $65,000 in 2010 so that she “would not have to become a prostitute.” Berlusconi was 73 years old at the time. And it should also be noted that he had sex with the girl. (Does this somehow not fall into the category of “prostitution” in Italy?)

Old Silvio and the 17-year-old girl he paid (for sex) “so she would not have to become a prostitute” (photo credit: telegraph.co.uk)

It will be interesting to see if he is elected yet again, in which case, the movement for gender equality in Italy will be set back a decade or two yet again.

Some characters on the wall of Monti Tiburtini metro station…

A pleasant sign greeting you at Fiumicino Airport…