mixed_biscuits
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We could spot English people in Eastern Europe from hundreds of metres away purely by their duckwaddle gait.
Italy
- Thread starter sufi
- Start date
luka
Well-known member
they're literally deformed. i can't work out what does it.
nonsense. we could rusky them out of existence by throwing an infinite amount of men at them. if it weren't for the shias and their uncultivated tribal ways, maximum centralisation and maximum authoritarian dictatorship, aren't these the words which make biscuits tremble with fright?
sufi
lala
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Do oyu think this is true of fish and chips, too?
Is the best fish and chips to be found in belgium?
shakahislop
Well-known member
one of the best countries. terrible music everywhere. all i heard anywhere is 80s rock and relentless cheese pounding 4x4 bass.
such a strong relationship with america. italians going to america and the american tourist imagination italy. so much of the ancient sites have been twisted to the american taste. ortigia felt like it had been reserved as an american fantasy site. these sort of syncretic things. recognising things from nyc pizza shops and little italy on the street in sicily. maybe even a stronger tie than between the UK and america.
there's a european periphery and a core. sicily feels like the extreme periphery. milan feels like a constituent part of the core
walking through milan on a saturday night - europe still feels like an achievement. i'm not a chauvanist. but europe for all the problems still feels like the bit of the planet that's got it right, more than anywhere else. partly by accident and partly through exploitation of distant places. who knows if it's gonna last
definitely starting to understand the american perspective on europe as small and irrelevant. that reality is accelerating as america gets comparatively richer and europe becomes more troubled. americans are cursed to live in the superpower, it has all kinds of effects. on the ground in a less abstract sense the americans especially the ones that travel just have so much more money than your average italian. it's a bit like backpackers in south-east asia, you can feel the money making everything twist to its will.
one of the stranger things about this trip, i was in a big group of 50 americans, was the number of people with one kind of weed dependency or another and how that stutters without easy access in a new place where you have to find someone to sell it to you. and how whatever you can buy isn't strong enough compared to the legal weed in america. seeing the long-run consequences of legalisation. and that general american thing of everyone being medicated in one way or another.
such a strong relationship with america. italians going to america and the american tourist imagination italy. so much of the ancient sites have been twisted to the american taste. ortigia felt like it had been reserved as an american fantasy site. these sort of syncretic things. recognising things from nyc pizza shops and little italy on the street in sicily. maybe even a stronger tie than between the UK and america.
there's a european periphery and a core. sicily feels like the extreme periphery. milan feels like a constituent part of the core
walking through milan on a saturday night - europe still feels like an achievement. i'm not a chauvanist. but europe for all the problems still feels like the bit of the planet that's got it right, more than anywhere else. partly by accident and partly through exploitation of distant places. who knows if it's gonna last
definitely starting to understand the american perspective on europe as small and irrelevant. that reality is accelerating as america gets comparatively richer and europe becomes more troubled. americans are cursed to live in the superpower, it has all kinds of effects. on the ground in a less abstract sense the americans especially the ones that travel just have so much more money than your average italian. it's a bit like backpackers in south-east asia, you can feel the money making everything twist to its will.
one of the stranger things about this trip, i was in a big group of 50 americans, was the number of people with one kind of weed dependency or another and how that stutters without easy access in a new place where you have to find someone to sell it to you. and how whatever you can buy isn't strong enough compared to the legal weed in america. seeing the long-run consequences of legalisation. and that general american thing of everyone being medicated in one way or another.
sus
Moderator
@shakahislop Are you in Milan? I'm in Turin.
sus
Moderator
In Rome, a pizza guy said, "You're from California? Why on earth are you here?" He thought I was crazy to leave.
In Naples, some young gals, friends of friends, heard we lived in New York and said, "New York! It is so beautiful!" Not sure I've ever heard anyone describe NYC as beautiful before.
I'm pretty sure the tourist shops sell more NYC hats than hats with local town names/slogans/symbols.
shakahislop
Well-known member
shakahislop
Well-known member
sus
Moderator
I've felt a similar thing. On the one hand, extremely tired of very generic and similar-seeming European historic centers. Here's another designer clothing shop—oh look! it's the same handbag/shoes pairing they had in the window in Girona. Started getting weird deja vu, cities blurring, couldn't keep them straight. Stone streets stone walls overpriced fabrics and watches, pigeons, someone playing "Hallelujah" on electric cello.
But also this sense of extremely comfortable peaceful and orderly (except for Naples, and Italian roadways generally) existence. Come sip your coffee have some gelato have a cocktail have some prawns. Weird to think it could slip away and seem like a dream, a golden age.
shakahislop
Well-known member
in a town called....i can't remember....they had these street decorations which were exactly what they have in the little italy tourist hell. not a surprise. but these continuities between america and the old world live on - i guess the right metaphor is echoes. the world takes on a different sense of time when you see things like that. there's a way of looking at Nyc as having a chunk of southern italian dna. in the aggression i think. and the driving