Yesterday evening I went out to dinner with a couple of my dear ex-pat friends to celebrate two of our birthdays. Of course we are all four from different places originally (USA, NZ, France and Holland) and we always chat in English. Yes, we all speak Italian very well, but being as it is natural for me and my Kiwi friend to speak English the other two automatically join in.
During dinner I noticed a man sitting at a nearby table who kept turning around to look at us and was continually mentioning to his friends that we weren't Italian. Of course we are all used to hearing things like this so I didn't mention it to my friends, but as he continued to do it for the entire evening I decided to point it out to them.
We had been talking about how long we had been with each of our husbands and it turned out that three of us have known our hubbies for ten and a half years (since 1999) and the fourth has acutally been in Italy since then but met her companion only three years ago. Having all arrived at some point during that particular year we have some similar memories.
My French friend asked if we thought that Italy had changed at all in the past ten years. Of course pointing out this gentleman that kept turning around brought up the topic of being noticed in Italy. We all agreed that ten years ago walking down the street we would get the typical "cat calls" that Italy was famous for. Nowadays you don't hear them like you did before. It isn't only because we are older (although still all good looking if I do say so myself) but partly because the younger generation (those who were only school children when we arrived) no longer do this type of thing. You see the boys all grouped together walking around town and groups of girls doing the same and occasionally they get up the courage to approach each other, but you just don't hear a lot (if any) verbal harassing as you would have ten years ago.
I think the creation of the European Union and its recent expansion have also had a large hand in many of the changes we have noticed. Ten years ago Italy seemed quite individual though part of the European community. There was still the Italian Lira and laws were still mainly their own. We all commented on how much prices and costs of living have gone up since the introduction of the Euro in 2002, they have seemingly doubled (perceived price increases in Holland and France seem to be smaller) and laws introduced by the EU are also very apparent in everyday life.
When we all arrived here helmets weren't required on motorcycles or scooters and therefore NOBODY wore them, seat belts were never worn and those who had cell phones, used them freely while driving. While Italians are still very aggressive drivers I must say that the helmet law is the most followed law (at least in this part of Italy). Seat belts are not always worn, and children can still be seen standing up in the back seat of the car while their parents are racing down the road at high speeds, not to mention that blue tooths are still not very popular in Italy, however it isn't the same as it used to be.
The thing that seemed odd to me when I first arrived here was the lack of environmental awareness. The most apparent was the complete lack of recycling anywhere in Italy. On my way to Italy I had visited France, Switzerland and Germany and found it possible to recycle even walking down the street or in the train station. But in Italy no such thing existed! This to me was really shocking since I had been recycling most of my life. Curbside recycling started in Seattle in 1986 and Italy still had no apparent interest in it thirteen years later. In fact we got our first public recycling bins in our small town around 2004, nearly twenty years after it had become common in Seattle.
Immigration is more apparent now too. With the opening up of the borders to the twenty seven member countries (plus the proximity to Northern Africa and illegal immigration) Italy is seeing an increase in immigration. Traditionally Italians were the ones to move away to America, Australia or other European countries, but now you can go to Rome, and as my friend mentioned, walk down the streets and be hard pressed to hear a conversation in Italian. The crucifix has even been removed from all public offices, buildings and schools! This, in the country which not only boasts the capital of the Catholic world but also a population of nearly 80% being Catholic. Although Italy wasn't a unified country until around 150 years ago it still has a strong sense of what it is to be Italian, and they are now dealing with the "threat" of no longer having a "true" Italy. The country is struggling with how to deal with the new influx of other cultures and has created laws that encourage integration in the schools with a cap of 30% of foreign kids in a class as one example of how to keep Italy Italian. Coming from America, the melting pot of the world, immigration is common place, and therefore not a new thing, though it is often in the news there too. For Italy, however seems to be a fairly new concept, and a bit of a "scary" one for them.
Change will always happen and it is a way to improve and evolve, however sometimes it is difficult to let things go, and maybe somethings shouldn't change, but these are just some of our observations of how change has occurred in Italy in our eyes over the last ten years.
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