Smoke, Speed and Drink Wine

I feel hung over. After an eight day trip to Italy, visiting four airports in 22 hours while fighting a gnarly head cold, I woke up back in America on Christmas not knowing what day it was. Oh, that's right. This is the day Jesus was born. It's called Christmas. Wait, where am I?
Even though my head is three feet thick on the most important day of the year, it was worth it. Italy was amazing--like an outdoor museum. Every building, statue, fountain, staircase and lamp-post seemed to be 2000 years old and designed by a famous artist. The country is full of majestic rivers and ruins, beautiful fountains and flora and people who smoke, drive like maniacs and park on sidewalks.
I am not kidding.

I made the mistake of sitting at the front of the tour bus a few times and was absolutely shocked at how often we came millimeters from sending a brunette on a motor-scooter to her death or vaulting a pedestrian into a fountain. Smart cars, fiats, scooters and motorcycles weaved around us and criss-crossed in front of us like angry bees. We drove winding, narrow, ancient roads where our bus driver had to honk as he approached a curve to ensure that pedestrians, drivers, birds, WHOEVER, would not end up on the windshield. On one trip up a hill to a Tuscan restaurant, I don't think I breathed the entire trip. I gasped, but didn't breathe. My tour guide actually warned me not to sit in the front because of the craziness I would witness. I should have listened. She also told me when I used crosswalks in Rome to just "step out and smile." I tried it and made it home to talk about it, but there were a few times I almost ended up a hood ornament. At least I would have been a smiling hood ornament.

Here are a few others things I learned that I think you should know if you plan to travel to Italy:

1. Order wine. Italians drink wine at every meal. OK, maybe not breakfast, but they don't really eat breakfast so that doesn't count. (I felt like a PIG eating anything more than a postage stamp sized pastry and a drop of espresso.) At lunch, they will offer you soda just to be nice, but if you order it, you will look like a crazy American.
2. Whatever you do, if you DO order a soda, do not drink it straight out of the bottle or can. Evidently, Italians think that is gross (i.e. American). One time in Amalfi after ordering a slice of pizza, I asked for a can of Italian orange soda (wine was not an option since this was a fast-food like place) and was asked if I wanted a plastic cup to go with my soda. I said no. I was promptly handed a straw. It became clear to me that OBVIOUSLY, if I wasn't going to POUR my drink into a cup, then I was going to sip it with a STRAW because I would NEVER drink it straight out of the can like a barbarian (i.e. American). I learned my lesson.
3. Put down your money. Want to hand that bill to your cashier? Don't. Put it down my friend. Right there on the counter. Let her pick it up. And when your change comes back, do not stick out your hand like a peasant. Just wait for her to plop (or slam) it down in front of you, then meekly pick it up one Euro coin at a time while the Italian behind you pushes you out of the way.
4. Take up smoking. You might as well. You are going to smell smoke everywhere you go--sidewalks, restaurants, cafes, museums, parks--it doesn't matter. I think I even smelled smoke inside the Vatican at one point, but that may have been money burning in the tourist's pockets when they caught site of the bottled holy water in the gift shop. If you want fresh air, you'll have to leave the country. Let me put it this way--I had to come back to Los Angeles to breathe clean air. Does that tell you something?
5. Do not drive, but if you must, drive like you are being chased or you are late for your wedding. Do not wait behind other cars or large tour buses, simply zip around them like they are children on tricycles. Speed on the wrong side of the road. Flash your lights to tell other drivers to get out of you way. Honk profusely. If you are on the freeway, flash your lights and honk profusely at the same time. Back up into oncoming traffic on a narrow street and cuss people out in your best Italian as they gesture at you with disgust. One thing though, wear a helmet. Yes, even if you are driving a car.
   
6. Park wherever you'd like. Anywhere really. In America, you get a ticket if you park in a handicapped spot or on a one lane road, and you'd get towed if you dared to park on the curb in front of a store with your bumper 6 inches from display window. But not in Italy where parking is a free for all! If someone beats you to a spot, act like you are at the Hollywood Bowl and stack park behind them.
7. Stop smiling, talking loudly and laughing. What is it about being American that makes us so dang happy all the time? I think Italians find this very annoying, bordering on obnoxious. My tour group was constantly "shushing" each other every where we went because no matter whether we were in a restaurant or a museum, no one else was talking loudly, or laughing, or smiling. I pretty much walked around Italy for eight days trying to hold in my laugh and talk like I was a nun in a library.
8.  Learn a language other than English. Everyone I met in Italy spoke at least three languages, usually Italian, English and French. Our tour guide spoke Italian, Spanish, English and French and was learning Portuguese. I speak English and intermediate Spanish. I felt like an uneducated moron. I learned four Italian phrases (three were greetings) and that was all my brain could hold. The good news is if you speak only English, you will have no problem in Italy since nearly everyone speaks English and a lot of signs are in English, but you will feel like you should have paid more attention in your high school language classes or at least ordered Rosetta Stone for Christmas.
   
9. Do not wear white tennis shoes. Or baseball hats. PLEASE. No one in Italy wears these except the American tourists. Italians dress like every day is business casual Friday or they are headed to a fashion show. If they wear jeans, they are form fitting (bordering on "painted-on" if you are under 30) and a nice collared shirt or sweater with a puffy jacket and a scarf if it is cold. The men wear brown leather dress shoes or boots. White sneakers and baseball hats look tacky inside the Pantheon or other places of importance. It just doesn't seem right to be standing next to two thousand year old ruins in the Forum with a Dodgers logo on your head.
10. Watch your step. Americans are used to smooth paved roads, hand railings on stairs and flashing signs that say "Watch Your Step."  Italians are not. You either watch your step or fall head first into the burial site of an ancient pope or off of a sheer cliff into the Mediterranean. So for goodness sake, put down your phone unless you want a selfie of your last few seconds on the planet.

That's about it. I hope you find this helpful if you decide to travel to Italy. Now, if you'll excuse me, I am going to have some wine, a smoke, and head to bed.

Buon Natale!

-Hope A. Horner, 2016

Contact author on gmail at hopeh1122

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#iloveitaly

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I Blew it on Small Business Saturday

I just couldn't do it.
Saturday was "Small Business Saturday." I was supposed to go out and support local small businesses and snub the big chain stores.
But it just didn't happen.
I needed hardware for my new house - nuts and bolts, that type of thing.
Anybody seen a local hardware store around lately?
Exactly.
I ended up at Lowe's and got what I needed.
At least I didn't go online. Or shop at Walmart. Give me SOME credit.

Shopping local just ain't as easy as it used to be. Many small town stores just don't exist anymore. It's all Home Depot and Target and Toys R Us and Petsmart. The best I could do this past Saturday was have coffee at a non-chain coffee shop--A place with three chairs, a lady with braided hair and an espresso machine that sounded like a VW bug. But that didn't happen. I made myself Starbucks coffee at home. My home is small; does that count? It wasn't that long ago there were small stores for tools, electronics, pet supplies, sporting goods, and toys. Now they're like endangered species: Rare, specialized and really expensive to try to save.
I grew up in the 1970's and 80's in a suburb of Los Angeles. Even being that close to the big city, we had lots of small businesses to support. A few of my favorites were Burt's Pharmacy (I was too young for prescription meds, but they had LOTS of jawbreakers, lemon-heads and Snickers bars) and Marty's Hobbies. Only one of the two still exist today and it has added drones to its inventory. Poor ol' Burt probably got beat out by Rite Aid and CVS. I wonder if Marty is worried about Hobby Lobby coming to town? I remember back in the early 1980's Marty had a soda machine right at the front of his store. It wasn't the usual type of machine. It was a tall metal machine that dispensed bottled soda---grape, orange, cola, lemon lime. I think they were 25 or 30 cents--I can't remember--but you would put in your money and pull a soda out of what looked like a vertical wine cooler. It made a great ker-chunk sound when you pulled it out. Even better, it had a built in bottle opener and when you pried the bottle open, the cap would fall in a catch basin below. Soooo coool. The grape soda was the best! Sometimes I would just go into the store to get a soda and walk out. I wasn't much of a fan of the remote control cars or model airplanes. I preferred the music store just a few doors down that had cassettes and CDs in giant packages. I forget the name of this

store, but it was where I bought my first CD. I wish I could tell you it was U2, or Talking Heads, or Bruce Springsteen, but instead it was Falco. I know, it's a crying shame I saved all the money from washing Dad's car and scooping up dog poop in the backyard to buy a CD with Rock Me Amadeus on it.
Now I don't even buy CDs anymore.
I don't buy music anymore!
I have a subscription to Spotify and listen to Sirius XM in my car.
My how things have changed.  Even if I wanted to buy a CD this past Saturday, I would have been hard-pressed to find one. Does Best Buy still sell CDs? I had heard they were phasing out their CD department. Plus, I was not about to elbow my way around sleepy people carrying $40 ninety inch flat-screens to get Sting's latest album. Album? Speaking of album...
Remember record stores?  So maybe I am not old enough to remember the REAL record stores of the 50's and 60's with listening booths and rows and rows of vinyl, but I have perused a few pretty cool ones in Southern California. I have about 100 records in my collection and love the scratch the needle makes when you first put it on the record and the rush of warm nostalgia that flows out between the crackling of dust.
I should have hit some records stores on small business Saturday. It's just that I didn't need any more records and the things I did need, were not available at small stores anymore.
Small business Saturday. Shop local while you can; if you can! I didn't do such a great job this year, but I'm grateful my childhood was full of bottled soda and 10 cent candy in small cardboard boxes. I'm still sorry my first CD was a one hit wonder though. By the way, where is that thing? I might be able to put it up on Ebay.

-Hope A. Horner, 2016
Contact author on gmail at hopeh1122