It is hard to get mad when things go wrong in Italy - they very often do go very wrong, but then you remember that you are actually in Italy.
Take for instance the internet at Foyer Unitas (the student residence where I live). For weeks we were having major problems with the internet crashing. The technicians were becoming regulars here as they were being called in every other day. It turns out that they had wired the entire system through the laundry shoot!! When laundry was dropped down the shoot it was pulling the wires out and our access! Unbelievable!
Then there is the bus system. Although there are a great many busses coming and going all the time, no one actually has to pay for the bus (its an honour system) nor is there a schedule. People get on and off and busses come and go willy nilly. The schedule is set by the driver's smoke break. Sometimes you will wait half an hour for a bus and three will show up at once. Of course the first bus is packed to the rafters.
Then there are the little things like the low priority Italians put on having toilet seats or toilet paper. Who needs a seat when you can sit on the rim?
Oh, and customer service... the basic principle at work here is that if the service provider doesn't feel like providing the service, you can just figure it out on your own.
And don't even begin to understand the traffic. There are no lanes, no rules, no laws. You just go (very, very fast) and hope for the best.
Everybody smokes, drinks cappicino and wears fabulous clothing. And they have this even more fabulous custom of closing shop for three hours in the middle of the day. That means that life doesn't really get going till about 3pm. Shops stay open till 7:30 or 8pm. People don't eat till about 8:30pm and then they go out around 10pm.
There is so much more, but I will write as I think of them...ciao for now!
