An Italian Story
 

I just want to share this email from my friend, Joe, who just returned from 3 weeks in Italy, about his effort to get home from Bologna. It's a *hoot*! He's Italian, himself, and spent a week in an Italian intensive class before some touring with a friend.

'Well, I made it home. 22 hours late. Not flying out of Italy again. The whole thing was so typically Italian.

Italy has millions of signs. It just never has the one you need at the moment you need it. You can take the A14 Autostrada from Otranto on the Mediterranean to Bologna. A distance of over 450 kilometers and find signs directing you to Bologna very 2 kilometers until you get to a 6 way crossroad where you really need a sign and not find one.

I got to the Bologna airport around 8:30 Saturday morning after taking the 7:00 train from Padova. It was a cool, clear, beautiful summer morning in the Veneto. I didn’t know that it all meant WATCH OUT.

The airport was busy but not too busy for a Saturday holiday morning. The first weekend in August begins the “great escape” for Italians. None of the signs above the 33 check-in windows were indicating any flight numbers or destinations so I went to the info desk to take my chances of getting information on which one was processing the passengers for my flight to Amsterdam and then to the USA. Ten minutes later I had a lot of information but, unfortunately, not much of it useful. It could be either 12, 15, 16, 30, 31, 32 or 33. I went to the Bar across from the check-in windows to get a cappuccino and a brioche and asked the Barista if he knew. Without missing a beat he said, “KLM?” I said yes. He said, “KLM and Air France use windows 30, 31 and 32” which proves if you need any useful information, ask a bartender.

Those windows had about 75 people each standing in line. I went to 30 and waited. I couldn’t figure out why so many people were there so early. The plane didn’t take off for over two and a half hours.

Air France cancelled a flight to Paris. The flight had been delayed twice and the people, about half of them Italians, had been waiting for several hours already. (Italians don't wait well.) Now they are told it is cancelled. (You don't make a deal with an Italian and then not go through with it. Of course unless you are the Italian canceling the deal.) They are understandably upset. They are told that they have to go to another window to process because these windows are needed to process the next flight (The one that I'm on.) and that there are three agents ready at the other window to get them on to new flights quickly. The French, Americans, Spanish, Africans, British - in other words, everyone EXCEPT the Italians, move quickly to the other line. Now the fun begins.

The three lines of Italians, now having lost the glue of rational thought with the departure of the other nationalities to the new line, quickly dissolved into a bubbling, shouting, arm waving, hand biting, cursing, angry mass that starts to threaten the ticket agents. At one point, a couple of them jumped over the counter and grab a couple of computer keyboards and start typing and looking at the computer screen as if they were going to fix the problem themselves (because in their minds it was just someone typing the wrong thing into the computer and they were going to do it correctly.) At one point, a ticket agent in her late twenties gets shoved off of her chair by an angry passenger. They don't want to hear that they have to move to another line. This is their line and that is that. The agents try to move them physically to another line and some of the folks grab on to the counter in desperation. Then the police are called.

Two of them arrive with their nifty looking hats and gloves and an air of, "We'll take care of everything." They proceed to argue for the the next ten minutes with about 50 really pissed off Italians who have suffered an injustice. As a whole, the group starts shouting, "Non è giusto, non è giusto" (It's not right) and start pushing and shoving at the police. The cops, by this time are red faced and ready for an espresso and Grappa. (I'm trying to measure how fast I can get to the nearest door and if I have what I need in my back pack in the event I have to run for it and leave my bags.) They remain pretty calm and with an assortment of hand gestures, blows on their whistles and unbuckling of their gun holsters, and well chosen curses, get the crowd to quiet down a little. The ticket agents make a run for it at this point.

While all of this is going on, the non Italian passengers who went to the other line to find other flights to Paris have all been processed and the line is empty. The police finally make the group see this and then in one surging mass, they all head to the empty window to try to be first to get their new flight. The two police re-buckle their holsters, take off their hats and sag, relieved against the ticket counter.

The fun isn’t over, though. Ten minutes later the ticket agents return to window 30, 31 and 32. They order coffee and hash over the previous hour’s events with absolutely no concern that they are an hour behind in processing the next flight. MINE.

Finally two women sit down at the terminals and ask for the passports of the first people in their lines. I’m the second person at window 30. Ahead of me are a guy, his wife and daughter and his mother-in-law. The computer cannot find the ticket of the mother. She has an issued ticket in her hand but the computer doesn’t have it listed and won’t print a boarding pass. 45 minutes later the problem is resolved. Remember what I said about Italians not waiting well? The people in line almost hang the guy for holding up the rest of us for 45 minutes. I learned a few more hand gestures and a few more great curses but my line wasn’t the fun one. The fun was happening at window 31.

The girl there begins to process the first person in her line. Just after she begins, she gets a cell phone call (cell phones in Italy are called Telefoninos) and talks to her mother for ten minutes. She hangs up and continues to process the first person again and the phone rings a second time. It’s Mamma again. This time she gets up and walks away talking to her mother. 15 minutes later she returns and starts again. She makes it through the processing for a couple of minutes and then breaks out into tears and then uncontrollable full blow hysterical crying. Another ticket person, the one at window 32, comes over to console her and the two of them walk off through the crowd. 20 minutes later, another person shows up at that window and begins to process the boarding pass again. The guy with the mother-in-law finally gets finished in my line and I step to the counter. Three minutes later I’m heading to the gate. Things are looking up.

We got into Amsterdam 30 minutes before the plane to Minneapolis took off but they decided it was too much trouble to hold it for us so they bumped us and told us we had to stay in Amsterdam for the night. They listed the reason as Air Traffic Control Problems so we got no compensation for lodging. I was able to talk the agent who was trying to find me a flight for the next day into a ten Euro meal voucher (which in Amsterdam is good for a beer and a bag of chips), a 5 minute phone card and an upgrade to Business Elite class from Amsterdam to Houston. I found a hotel nearby. Took a train to the city center to look around and kill some time and ran into the Euro Gay Pride Day Celebration in downtown Amsterdam. How lucky can a guy be.'

Karen
http://www.pbase.com/karenmickleson

Great story, K.

Did the policemen get their hair mussed?

((I))

Thank you SO much for sharing...I felt like I was there. Joe really knows what he is saying when he tells us that Italians don't do waiting well!

Great story!

So so Itlian !

Those damn foreigners.

Funniest story I've read in a long time.

The terms "Bologna," "Air France," and "computer" all sent shivers down my spine as I had that exact experience in 2002. Fortunately the Air France computer HAD my reservation but it involved going BLQ-CDG-IAD-ATL, instead of the BLQ-CDG-ATL routing that my paper ticket had....

That pleasant nonstressful airport experience was at the tail end of a trip that involved record heat, my spraining my elbow slipping on the Riomaggiore boat ramp, and getting caught at Florence SMN station the day before a train strike.

I love it! :-d

OMG, that is so funny. How true too. Thanks for sharing this with us, it brings back memories too.

"Italians don't wait well"

A master of understatement.

Great story!

Thanks for sharing that hillarious story. I can't wait to e mail it to my friend who works in the US office of an Italian company. When I e mailed her on the afternoon of July 6, I received a blanket "out of office" response saying the whole office "would be closed on 28 May for the July Fourth Holiday"!

You meant June 2nd, which is Feast of the Republic in Italy, which is equivalent to the 4th of July ,here in the US.

I'm delighted to bring you this bit of Italian pleasure. I wrote Joe to tell him I'd posted it here (and at one other site), and this was his response:

'Holy shit. People really liked it. i just typed it at the computer Monday morning before I went to work. Now I wish I'd spent some time on it. I'm glad people could identify with it and it's obvious that others have had similar experiences. One of my friends wrote back about how horrible my day was there. I didn't think it was horrible. When in Italy, you simply have to accept these things about the people and culture and love them for what they are. Being in Italy is like watching one huge, on going play. All the people you meet are characters playing their part. It's a drama. They do it so well. I love them and while the inconveniences can be a pain in the ass sometimes, you just have to smile and love it for being so honest and truly Italian. No other place like it.'

I take liberty posting his thoughts here, but it adds to the endearingness of the ideas he expressed so eloquently.

Karen
http://www.pbase.com/karenmickleson

Too funny!!

Hilarious, and like others here, I can completely relate.

Thanks to Karen for sharing Joe's ordeal, and to Joe for being such a good and eloquent sport.

If he's Italian, why did he have to take an intensive class in Italian?

I didn't say he's *an* Italian :) He's an American of Italian descent. And he started taking Italian classes at home in Sacramento a few years back when he wanted to visit Italy and track down the villages his parents were from. It progressed from there.

Karen
http://www.pbase.com/karenmickleson

Cute story Karen, however, your friend must have a Big imagination and enjoyed embellishings his story.

I departed from FCO many times and never had any problems.
Actually I had more problem leaving the US on time.

Josser,
A lot of Americans will refer to themselves as Italian, Irish, German, etc. because that is where there ancestors are from. Most of them don't speak the language of the country they are talking about and many have never been there. Personally, I find it an odd. I think it is good to be interested in one's heritage, but to go around referring to yourself as that nationality/ethnicity is what is odd to me.

Very entertaining story, although I take it with a huge grain of salt!

Italian Americans are a very different culture than Italians (of the various different regions), though I think Joe certainly shows a very "Italian" gift for embellishing and decorating a story.....

I'm not exactly offended by the pigeonholing -- I guess irritated is more like it. I grew up with several people on the Irish-American side of my family who were totally stuck on seeing behavior as "typically Irish" and thought it was a big chuckle, wink wink, nudge nudge, to explain the world that way. I think it make people feel "knowing."

I read the (overwritten) story and learned that the reason this guy didn't get back to the States for 22 hours was because of Air France and policies at the Amsterdam Airport.

I don't for a minute think that there is embellishment going on here. Have seen variations on this theme with my own eyes. The personal telefonino call in the middle of transactions, the hysteerics of the Italians if something goes awry with plans.

I was once in an airplane waiting to take off from FCO going to Catania. A garbled (to my ears)announcement was made in the cabin by the captain. Hysteria ensued, Screaming, crying, yelling etc. I thought that we were under attack. Find out that we were to be delayed 30 minutes.

Yes, High Drama!! I love it.Keep going back for more.

I believed the phonecall to some extent, but found his claim that people "jumped over the counter and began typing into the computer" to be, well, unbelievable to say the least. Though the thought is entertaining....

I have never heard of an American claiming to be English.
Are we likely to see a St. George's Day parade in New York with girls in mini beefeater costumes?

That is funny you should say that Josser. After I posted I was thinking about this one lady I knew who was American who "said I'm English and I don't pronounce it like that" when people were talking about pronunciations of certain words (American v. British). So I said, "I mean people from England" to which she replied "well, if you are going to get technical."

You are right though, you won't usually hear an American say they are English. As far as European countries go, it is usually German, Italian, Irish and maybe Polish.

Oh my goodness.

Just to clarify, Joe doesn't refer to himself as Italian, *I* do, after years of friendship, of stories about his Italian grandparents, of being served fabulous Italian meals by him since he loves to cook.

He rattled off this email to we who knew he'd been held up. I shared it here because it made me laugh, and it mirrored many experiences of my own in Italy. We both love and are entertained by the drama of Italian culture. He wasn't submitting this for a creative writing class, for petes sakes.

Joe's a good Catholic Jesuit guy who doesn't lie ;^) Who cares if a person leaped over a counter or walked around it to take over the computer? I've seen the same type of thing many times--especially service folk taking personal phone calls while people wait in line. It's not about being critical of Italians; it's about sharing the 'movies' we're provided so often as life goes by when we're in other places.

I guess one person's funny is another's bone of contention. Oh well, vive la difference!

Karen
http://www.pbase.com/karenmickleson

Wonderful story. Thanks for sharing.

The story is entertaining, it's just that in the many times I've passed through airports in Italy, in all sorts of situations, (don't get me wrong, I love the dramas of Italian culture too, I've never seen anyone jump over, or step behind a check counter to grab keyboards and begin entering data, much less "leap over" one, so I found that sort of thing rather hard to believe. I'm sure was writing for an audience of friends, though..just trying to entertain. I'll take it as a "story" and be entertained by his writing style. no problem!

I still thing that Joe has a great flair for writings and a BIG Imagination..
I had flights cancelled, delayed, spent more than 8 hours at the airport and never acted or saw my fellow Italians acting that way..

>At one point, a couple of them jumped over the counter and grab a couple of computer keyboards and start typing and looking at the computer screen as if they were going to fix the problem themselves (because in their minds it was just someone typing the wrong thing into the computer and they were going to do it correctly.)>

Now give me a BREAK!!!Your friend is pulling your leg..:)
AnnaMaria

In the interests of MORE of this sort of thing, i.e. decent stories, well presented with a travel orientation, I would like to defend this story from Joe before anybody else decides not to send their little gem.

It was a STORY, not eye-witnesss reporting. It was funny. Isn't that enough? Do we really have to subject it to literary criticism at a grad student level and a scrutiny worthy of the Pulitzer?

In defense of Joe, not that he needs it, as a traveler I ended up behind the counter at an airline at LAX. I wrote about it in a trip report. I even had a line of customers waiting for me to get off of my personal phone call.

I would hate to be telling someone of my escapades and have them pick it to pieces with mundane details and questions. How boring.

What I don't get is the people who think if they have never seen such a thing, it didn't happen. Nobody's experience is that all-encompassing. If they didn't get pickpocketed in Rome, (A) it doesn't happen or (B) they're too street-smart. Probably they were just lucky.

One person's experience -- necessarily limited experience -- does not define the whole truth. And one person's recommendation does not make me want to stay at a specific hotel or eat at a specific restaurant. Unless I know that person and/or have calibrated his taste relative to my own.

Well, the idea of someone jumping over the ticket counter sounds farfetched to many but I have seen THAT happen with my own eyes! It was a French train station and when a nice lady who had waited her turn in line finally stepped up to the ticket window the ticket agent jumped over the counter and started screaming at her and beating on her with his fists. I swear to God this happened. My daughter and husband were with me. We were too far away to hear the exact thing she said that ticked off the agent, but we joked that she asked a question that he had heard all day and he snapped. After he screamed at her and smacked her and as the authorities arrived he jumped back over the counter and slammed the ticket window closed with all his might. They were walking him away when we left and there were people comforting the poor women who had the misfortune to ask when the next train was to Rennes, or some such. We were speechless and glad it hadn't been us.

Hi, this is Joe.

I grew up in an Italian-American house in Chicago that spoke three Italian dialects and English. I like Italy so much because I feel comfortable there. Not because the infrastructure is sometimes third-world or because the bureaucracy moves at a snail's pace and is so over weighted that it seems that it will crush the individual most of the time but because of the helter-skelter mess of the society and thought process from which emerges gorgeous music, and art and science and literature and wonderful things to eat and a humanity and love and patience for the base, simple, elemental parts of us. There is a balance and rhythm that exists because the Italians are comfortable with themselves. I like that. I grew up with that but I assimilated into the sterile, anxiety producing, over working uncomfortable ways of Americans. I like the way they look. They look like me and my family and I like to think when I'm there that I'm a part of that bigger family. Dio ti ama, and so do I.

I do remember Seaurchin's story about a phone call but I don't remember it as leaping over the counter and grabbing a phone, but my memory isn't perfect anyway.

Nice post Joe. Your writing is lots of fun to read, and you can write about travel very well, without any added decorative details, your story would be even better!

Joe, please don't feel as though you need to defend yourself! It was a great story, and I love your attitude. These things happen, and you just go on with your trip. When I was in Rome last Christmas, I was without my luggage for the first five days of my trip. I know this would have made a lot of people go nuts, but I preferred to look on it as a reason to shop in Rome!

Joe (and Karen)...I say "excellent mini-trip report!) :)

How skeptical our world today. People don't believe me when I tell them that I saw a woman once leap onto the desk of a bank vice-president and lunge for her throat. Seems the woman had been carjacked and robbed and gunpoint a week before. She promptly reported her stolen purse/checkbook to the bank. The bank proceeded to make a series of errors in cashing 2 of the 4 stolen checks, cleaning out the woman's account in the process; then bouncing the other 2 checks that came through instead of holding them; returning the money to her account...only to turn around and cash the 2 stolen "bounced" checks and cleaning out her account again. I believe the desk-jumping, throat-lunging event was immediately preceded by a phone call the woman received from the Sheriff's office telling her that a warrant had been issued for her arrest for writing bad checks!!!!

I know THAT story is true, because it happened 25 years ago...and that woman was me!!!

PS Karen, sorry to "hijack" your posting. It just irritates me that people don't believe something just because it sounds unlikely. :)

No problem, Sarge. Your story is amazing.

I marvel at how the infinite array of personality types here respond to what they read. I guess that's what makes the world go 'round.

Karen
http://www.pbase.com/karenmickleson