To: The Italian People
From: An Italian-American (or a lemon-loving Neapolitan who just happened to get transplanted to America when she was little).
How does this country function? Can anyone answer that?
That's the question an American friend of mine who's lived here for decades asked last night. It wasn't a question, actually, more of a statement. As in, I do not understand how this country functions.
I sure as hell didn't have an answer for her. Do any of you?
Yesterday, I waited half an hour at the post office to pay my electricity bill. That's the only place you can physically pay your utility bills here. Can't mail them anywhere.
And then, because I also needed some stamps for a couple postcards one of my son's friends left for me to mail, I had to get another number and then wait in a separate line for a few minutes for stamps. Couldn't buy stamps anywhere else in town either. And couldn't buy them at the same window where you pay your bills.
You gotta be kidding.
Saw a program on Italian television yesterday afternoon about Italy's brain drain. A doctor from southern Italy was featured saying he had to move to the States recently because he couldn't get any funding for the research he wanted to do here, couldn't really make any progress at all in his field here.
He said he made immediate progress when he moved to the States -- to Columbus, Ohio (from majestic southern Italy?) -- but that that saddened him immensely, because he didn't want to go. I thought I might cry.
You guys gotta watch that. You don't want to lose all your best and brightest because it's all such a struggle here.
The flip side of this bureaucracy bung-up, though, is that ironically, it's also helped keep this country so beautiful -- and unchanged -- too.
The guy we bought the land off to build our side of the hill here had waited 10 years for building permission.
Building here takes a helluva lot of time -- and they're really strict about what can be done. (Even though people routinely bend the laws and then wait years for the amnesty that does eventually come, even if it is a quarter-century later).
My Neapolitan father used to say that the main thing you had to understand about Italy is that it never changes.
I had no idea how right he was. And ultimately how wonderful -- but also completely infuriating -- that is.
Is home the country you forgive the most?
Beautiful...
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