Tempo Italiano

Italians run late, they just do. My entire nine months here I have been trying to figure out if this is due simply to a more relaxed nature, less living by appointments and palm pilots and rigid schedules than the American lifestyle I am used to, or in fact if their perception of time is just skewed. Lately I have been more prone to answer with the latter, although I may be on the verge of discovering a method to this seeming neglect for tempo.

Take school for example, at the University of Florence classes are run on what was explained to me as the “University quarter-hour schedule,” meaning if your class is supposed to be from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. this really means you have fifteen minutes of leeway on either end of the class. The Professor will arrive anywhere up to fifteen minutes late and will dismiss class anytime within the last fifteen minutes. This scheduled tardiness exists within the realm of school, but in other realms it is less regimented, waiters may take half an hour to bring you your check, a friend might show up twenty minutes late to an appointment without a word of excuse, and buses, trains and planes have no real use for such banal things as schedules.

It is not only quarters of hours here and there that Italians dismiss as unimportant but this lacksadaisacal nature bleeds even into months and years. Their entire University system, for example, is based on modules of semesters that make up “three years” of study. You take approximately seven classes a year, and then will have a month, sometimes even two, to “study” before you take your exams between modules. It doesn’t take too much imagination to understand what happens when a college student is given two months off of school to follow a self-regimented study plan, and the result is that hardly anyone passes their first time around, but then are able to continue taking the exam during every exam period during their time at University, which somehow seems to stretch mysteriously from three years to five, seven, and sometimes more.

The Italian vocabulary is even telling of this strange vortex of time. Bambini, or as we would say, babies, are considered anywhere from newborn children to teenagers, while ragazzi, or children, are mostly college age students or anyone under thirty. Looking at the maturation process of Italian culture these terms seem intuitive, when people live at home through their college years, don’t get married until their mid thirties, and hardly ever have children anymore, not only are they referred to by a younger sounding word, they just are younger. As an American I came to Italy as a twenty year old, almost self-sufficient, college student, I live in my own apartment, hold down a job, and am considered an adult in most arenas of life. The moment I arrived in Italy I was immediately struck by the tendency for baristas or shopkeepers to refer to me as a bambina, “Who are they kidding?” I would think, offended to not be referred to formally as an adult. But as the time has passed I have slowly began to internalize the Italian culture and clock, realizing that their perceptions of me may not be so wrong, they just reflect a different set of priorities.

Earlier in the year we had an appointment with the Police Chief to get fingerprinted and registered as foreigners living in Italy for our visas. We arrived to the appointment over a half hour late and were then told to wait another fifteen minutes for the Chief to be ready for us. On the other hand, I went to my second Fiorentina soccer game today and left my house at noon to make it to the three o’clock match hours early with the rest of the Florentine population in order to ensure our good seats. Most people don’t marry until much later in life, but the common term to use instead of boyfriend or girlfriend to refer to your significant other is fidanzato, or fiancée. Apparently too Italians love, like soccer, is serious enough to speed up time for. Certain things are worthy of their time, others aren’t. Time to them is a precious thing, not to be wasted sitting in line at the police station, but to be spent cheering your home team on to victory during their team warm-ups, or over a five hour Sunday lunch with your family and “fiancée” that you met two weeks ago.

The Italian retardation of time as it applies not only to everyday living but to the entire life process may make me a bambina for a while longer, but it also seems to draw out adulthood, and old age into something that is lasting, something to look forward to as a phase of life instead of the end of all. Just walk into any café in Florence and count the number of people over the age of seventy who aren’t locked away in nursing homes or shunned out of society, but still actively discussing politics with their waiter, taking afternoon walks around the city and enjoying an evening glass of wine and aperitif before heading home for a 9 p.m. dinner.

It may be nice to get a coffee in under five minutes and have an appointment with a teacher that actually shows up on time when I make it back to America, but for now I’ll enjoy my newfound twenty-one year old infancy, and hope the rest can last just as long.

Fotografie di Sardegna

Home Sweet Home, Bungalow #11.


Stumbling upon a beach on our way to the grocery store.


The Sardegnian sun.


Racing to the sunset.


Scaling rocks in search of a less windy spot.


Beautiful beachy evening.

Moving Right Along. Paris to Florence to Sardegna.

I have officially decided that my perception of time here in Italy is the most baffling experience of them all. I almost feel as if too much has happened between this blog and my last to be able to write it all. I’ll try to sum it up quickly.

Paris was a lot of fun, my best friend from home was with me, and my best friend from the program and we got to spend time with my other wonderful friend from high school who is studying there. It was five full days in Paris and they were all jam packed with museums, pastries, and walking long distances. It made me appreciate once again my knowledge of the Italian language because even after two years of high school French I felt so bad not being able to even order a baguette sandwich correctly. The experience did, however, make me remember why the French language was so beautiful, and that I may still want to pick it back up one day. My favorite museum in Paris was the Museé D’Orsay, a museum that was created out of an old railroad station and now holds one of the most incredible collections of art I have ever seen including many works by three of my favorites: Degas, Monet, and Van Gogh.

Paris was exhilarating and exciting, there is absolutely so much to do there that I can see it being a very livable city, it was shockingly modernized and globalised in comparison with Florence, reminding me of things like multi-culturalism and efficiency that just don’t exist in Italy. The weather, however was freezing cold and it rained/snowed almost every day we were there, my feet were very tired by the end of the day, and getting back home to Italy was once again a wonderful feeling.

Since then the weather in Florence has been beautiful, I’ve finished up my University of Florence course and caught up on everything I missed from my illness. Friday morning three of my closest friends and I hopped a cheap RyanAir flight to Sardegna, the island off Italy’s western coast for a much needed relaxing three days. We flew into Alghero, the city in the northwestern corner of the island, found the bungalow we had reserved at a campground, and spent three full days lying on the beach, making our own dinners, and studying for our upcoming University exams. We got back late Sunday night, sunburned but happy, and now I have two more days to finish the reading for my University Exam Thursday morning. The exam is oral, we are responsible for knowing all of the information given in class plus three books we should have read, I am still swinging back and forth between feeling completely confident and completely unprepared, but hopefully the first one will win over come Thursday morning.

Now that I am back from Sardegna I have three and a half weeks of classes left, three weekends to spend in Florence, before finals for my other courses happen the first week of May, followed by our group trip to Sicily May 10-15, and then I will be flying home May 19th. There are six weeks sitting in front of me and I’m trying to tell myself they will be enough, but in all honesty I just can’t believe any of it.

Parigi

Me with my Degas at Musee D'Orsay.



The clock from the railroad station that the museum used to be.


Carly, Dana, and I in front of the Arc de Triomphe.



Inside the Louvre, the building was the coolest part.


The tower, with an extremely ominous cloud behind it.


Pastry break during the rain storm.


The view of the storm after it passed from the top of the Eiffel Tower.