Archive for August, 2009

Introduction to Italian culture: Culture Shock

Italian culture is an amazing mix of history, passion, and poetry. It’s been said that French is the language of love, Spanish the language of God, and Italian the language of Poetry. The mixed artistic and cultural heritage created and passed down since the early Roman Empire is nearly unsurpassed in the European theater. Italians as a people in this modern age are a little different than most traveling Americans expect. I’d like to spend this blog doing a brief introduction to my revelations regarding those differences.

Italians are a strong, passionate cultural group with amazing food, great family connection and strong national pride. However, they’ve got a different concept on a few key interactions.

In my travels I’ve found that Italians are much more physically active in conversation and interaction. Hand gestures which are a fully integral part to the Italian language and communication structure are essential to Italian conversation. I often joke with my Italian friends that they couldn’t hold a conversation if they held their hands behind their backs. They’re also more willing to make physical contact and build friendships quickly. This said it is important to note that there is a major difference between northern and southern Italians. Southern Italians are often much easier to build a quick report with, if you’ve got the patience to deal with their passionate attitude of life. Now, by that comment I mean that in conversation and daily interaction even the smallest point of conversation or daily frustration is like the end of the world. It’s a huge disaster regardless of the scale and must to be dealt with immediately. Southern Italians in my experience are also much more touchy-feely. They will quickly accept you and I found that they were generally the group which invited me home for dinner or to meet their families within only a few hours/days of knowing me.

Northern Italians are much more reserved. Again I’ve only had experience with Italians from the larger cities of Northern Italy, and it’s only a generalized perception but, having taken a lesson from their industry they’ve got a more global perspective and have pushed themselves toward a more business class/materialistic/withdrawn attitude. This was especially expressed during my time in Milan. Northern Italians are often colder at first and it takes much more effort to get to know them and be on a friendly basis with them. They were also often more reserved than their southern counterparts. In my opinion, this is in part due to their heritage, influenced by being the major cross roads for Austrian, German, and Asian/Eastern European and French/Spanish markets over the last 3 thousand years and the fact that they are now the financial and business heart of Italy. They are now more exposed to the international market than their southern brethren.

On a note more for travelers, I have often had non-Italian female friends express their shock at Italian men. It is worth mentioning that Italian men are much more forward and thoroughly blunter when it comes to courting a woman. They will often make physical contact -especially if you’ve made eye contact – and can even create threatening situations if they get out of control. In addition given a camera you may find that you’re having your picture taken without your permission. I think that this is in part due to a Media and cultural influence. All their lives they’ve been fed a glorified media image of foreign women being easy, open and accessible, where as Italian women are more reserved and much harder to court. It is my opinion that they have not discovered how to balance the reality and the image. Often it can be overwhelming and can be quite frightening for female travelers to encounter this type of behavior. The key is to be strong and to maintain calm.

Male travelers will encounter a slightly different difficulty. Often times they encounter a much colder welcome from Italian women. Italian women deal with the stronger pursuit from Italian men all their lives. So it takes a lot more effort and a different approach to generate a friendship and or a relationship with a native Italian in Italy. I met my girlfriend through my Internship in Milan (she’s from the south) and luckily had four months of work and social events to get to know her and her friends and date her. This different environment gave me an advantage. However as a traveler in hostels and cities through northern Italy and across eastern and central Europe I discovered that as a male traveling, you need to be careful. Although clubbing culture is becoming more globalized it is still culturally different in each country and province/region, the way you dance and interact on a social level in Italian clubs is much different than here in the U.S. there is a greater emphasis on personal boundaries and space. In addition Italian men, especially family are extremely protective of their sisters/female friends. You can find yourself ostracized very quickly by interacting rudely or without finesse regarding your courtship.

Another bit of shock when encountering the Italian culture is its proclivity to lively argument and prolonged yelling/screaming verbal encounters. I’ve heard countless stories and even encountered it myself. After a long prolonged, loud, and aggravated verbal encounter a non-Italian would escalate the confrontation to a physical encounter. He would be immediately surrounded and prevented from fighting as the Italians, shocked at this behavior reacted in horror, with questions shooting from every side asking if something was wrong – The general response… “of course something is wrong we’ve been arguing for 30 minutes”. This is the best illustration of Italian social interaction I can describe. To them an argument, yelling and screaming is only a part of normal interaction. It’s not a fight, it’s an expression. Only if something truly upsetting occurs can physical confrontation begin. Even then it is still frowned upon.

Hello folks! I apologize for the delay in blogging. Since Alex and I set off into the Highlands of Scotland and then across into Northern Ireland and then I continued into Northern England and down to London to return home I’ve not been able to blog. I’ve got quite a bit of catching up to do. As part of that process I’m now posting some of my writings regarding travel and some fun stuff that I’ve been working on during my trip. You’ll find the first of these below with more to come.

I’ve posted a great video:

And built up a nice follow-up blog of that video in Text:

Train travel and general travel tips in Italy:

Train travel in Italy is a friendly experience and one that can be faced without fear. Traveling by train in Western and Central European countries is the preferred route of travel by most visitors. Buses are an option, and although often cheaper may leave you at the outskirts of a city or have very limited departure and travel times.

I’d like to outline my experiences and draw on my time in Milan and traveling through central and eastern Europe to give you some insight into Train travel. I arrived in Milan, Italy January 20th 2009 and stayed until May 1st before participating in a Travel Study program across Eastern, Central and North Western Europe (Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Bosna I Herzegovena, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Latvia, Czech, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, British isles). During my Travels I used a mixture of Trains and Buses. I’d like to focus the first half of this post on Train travel in Western Europe.

Specifically I’d like to start with the Italian train system as an example. The system is open, straightforward and efficient. There are three major rules,

1. When you enter a train station, look for automated tellers (usually coded for 3-5 major languages). This has two benefits, the first is that the machines avoid speaking with a teller who may or may not speak more than one language. Second this will help you get written information and possibly provide information in English/German/Native language/ Chinese. Do be sure to check if there are student/youth/senior rates that are only available from a teller.

2. Find the departures board and the regular/regional train board. These provide information on the types of trains (as well as a description of what their symbols mean) and a regular daily time table so you can plan day trips on short notice.

3. VALIDATE YOUR TICKET! I can’t stress this enough. In every country I visited it was required that you validate your ticket. In Italy the fine for failing to do so can be 50-150 euro. It varies country by country but often the cost of forgetting or failing to Validate is 2-5 times that of the ticket. If you notice you’ve forgotten or the machines are out of order, Train conductors (in Italy at least) are required to validate your ticket if you come and find them. If they find you and it’s not validated some will validate it for a in pocket fee of 5 euro.

If you keep these three rules in mind, travel in any country via train is simple, stress free and can be significantly easier.

In Rule 2 I mentioned that there are different types of trains. In Italy there are fast trains, normal trains, and then there are the big commuters – called regional trains. Treno Regionale are the cheapest form of train transport in Italy. They are generally half the cost of normal trains and 1/3 that of the fast trains. They take a little while longer since they stop at almost every station but the difference in cost can make up for the delay. If your traveling across Italy, it may be worth the time to check different major cities along the path and check the Regionale connections. Instead of an express train you can catch a few Regionale commuters for a fraction of the cost. (Note this is not always the case, at times the number of changes can make the cost savings minimal).

The photo’s included here are representations of Italian (Trenitalia) equipment. However, the principles held true in Germany, Poland, Czech, Belgium, Holland, and the UK. Validation, and Train departure/automated systems are nearly universal in developed countries.

The second half of this Blog refers to Bus travel in Eastern Europe.

When I left the European Union and the fringe Shengen countries, I encountered an interesting phenomenon. Major train lines passed through capital cities and avoided smaller principalities. Leaving me with only one option – Buses. Eastern Europe, Greece, and Turkey especially were prone to major inconveniences when using the Train system. The trains were slower, less comfortable (minus sleeper cars) and had less flexibility and variety in travel destination, however to my surprise Bus travel in Eastern Europe is exceptional.

Eurolines is one company that does cross European transit – I’ll use their coaches as an example of the type of buses made available to travelers:

These large, 40+ seat buses generally have media – TV/VCR/DVD and in eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Serbia, Bosnia) they also have in drive refreshments (soda/water/snack food for free) and Orangeways and now some of the other major companies like Eurolines even have WIFI built into the buses. It’s a sense of luxury travel for a fraction of train ticket prices. As an illustrative example, I traveled from Istanbul, Turkey to Plovdiv, Bulgaria for 1/3 the price of the train ticket and arrived in just under ¾ of the time. As I continued my travels through Eastern Europe I ran into a lot of travelers who had purchased Inter/Euro Rail passes and found them to be a bad investment for eastern European countries for two reasons.

The first is that Train transportation in Western Europe is Much more expensive than eastern Europe making a Inter/Euro Rail pass a great investment because it sets a standard cost for each journey. However, Given the lack of functionality on most train lines and the lower cost in E. European countries the pass was more expensive than buying tickets individually and didn’t allow use of bus travel.