The Italian People

Now, don't get me wrong, I love Italian people and I have lots of Italian friends, BUT dayum, they can be  bit rude and mean haha. After spending two months in Africa, you get used to people being over the top friendly and speaking English. So I guess you could say, we got used to that and were a bit spoiled. After arriving in Italy, it was a bit of a shock for us or more so, me. First being, that English isn't commonly spoken, even at the tourist places. I sort of assumed that more people would speak English and especially at train stations, hotels and restaurants. I think it was a bit ignorant on my part not to learn some basic Italian before arriving because they really appreciate it when you try to speak their language. So definitely a mistake on my part. Second shock is how pushy and rude they are. Now, I don't think they are trying to be mean, I just think that is how things go in Italy. They don't believe in line ups, they just head straight to the front and push their way past you - so of course, us being Canadian, we just wait until its our turn.

One experience that we had, which is pretty funny now, was when we arrived at the train station in Napoli (Naples). After spending 5 days in Rome, we headed to the Amalfi Coast - and one of the ways to get there is by train from Rome to Napoli and then a local train from Napoli to Sorrento. After arriving in Napoli, you have to go to another ticket agent to buy a ticket for the local train in order to get to Sorrento, but on the day we arrived in Napoli, the local transit had decided to do a 24 hour strike. Not knowing this we went up to a ticket counter to purchase our ticket and this is what the agent said back to us "NO tickets!! NO tickets today, 24 hour strike". Not kidding, totally like the Soup Nazi guy from Seinfield hahah ... So she kind of told us about some other platform and mumbled something about the ferry. So we decided to go to the information both and see if he could help us - he then told us to go downstairs to buy our ticket for the local train - great, we thought that we were on our way. But no, definitely not, he had no idea what he was talking about and we were totally getting the run around and people weren't too happy to help us either haha.

Anyway, we made it to Sorrento and learnt after that, yes there was a strike, BUT the trains were running from 1:30pm-5pm that day so we could have just waited an hour and a bit at the train station and then could have taken the local train - but I guess the ticket agent didn't want to share this information with us. LOL. Like I said at the start, I do love the people here and not everyone is mean - most people are super sweet, you just get the handful that are a bit crazy haha ... And now that I can speak some Italian, I have them eating out of the palm of my hand ;) haha kidding.

Buonasera,

Love Melissa and Arnold