Hey, baby....ciaaaaooo

Eddie Izzard (a brilliant comic) in his show Dress to Kill, does a fantastic bit about italians that totally sums up the Italian attitude. (NB: The transcript really doesn't do this bit justice. Ask me sometime, and I'll play it for you, or look for "Italians and Fascists" on his CD Dress to Kill, which you can buy on iTunes if you want it.) "The Italians invented fascism but they were never really fascists. Mussolini, 1922 'We are all now Fascist,' but most Italians are just great on mopeds with no helmets going (makes motorcycle noise)...just driving along going 'ciiiiaaaooo. hey....chiquita, ciaaaaooooo...hey, baby...' You know, and they just hang out, they're kinda cool, you know, and everyone looks fantastic and they don't have their glasses on the top of their head, they have them just above their eyes. And there's three different types of police and they all just hang out and go 'ciaaaaaaaaooo. ciao, bella. ciao.' There's a bank raid going on in the distance...'you just be quiet over there! eh, ciao.'" There is definitely a lot of hanging out around here, going "ciaaaaao." The pace of life is just very slow, and, as my friend Klara pointed out, every 45 minutes, faciamo una pausa (we take a break) for something. If it's not the official pausa (when, from 1 to 4 every afternoon, absolutely everything in the city shuts down), it's a break for coffee or conversation, or a cigarette--basically, you'd just better hope not to get anything done in less than an hour. The other thing you need to know about time in Italy is that everything--absolutely everything--takes due minuti (two minutes), but that two minutes means every length of time between 30 seconds and 30 minutes, and 30 minutes means at least an hour. You get very used to class starting 15 minutes late (and 15 minutes is not considered late. If you show up less than 10 minutes late for class, there won't even be anyone there to wait for the teacher with yet. Students will start to filter in at about 13 minutes after the hour, and the teacher will sweep in between 15 and 25 minutes late, generally wearing a scarf in some new and exciting way.) A five minute break in the middle of class means that you'll have quite enough time to go downstairs, have a coffee, chat with your classmates, read a newspaper, and still be the first one back to class when you return 35 minutes later. They've had a great many years to master the art of relaxation, and they've really truly done it at last. No more of this rushing around being Roman and conquering things--Italy is finally quite content to sit quietly and spend hours doing nothing. Maybe it's the next level in the evolution of a cultural identity. If so, all I just hope that we get there soon. This showing up late for class thing is awesome.