Italy

[slofox]

Some of you on here will know that I spent two weeks in Italy recently. I will bore you with the odd article about my impressions thereof plus a few pics.

1. The Roman Taxi Driver:

It's all true - that stuff you read about loony taxi drivers in Rome. We took one such vehicimicle from the airport to central Rome. Four of us. I drew the front seat beside the driver. Holy shit. We exit the airport onto a section of motorway posted at 65km. Narrow and quite tight. The are lines of amber warning lights on short post all along this route. I figure when they flash they mean slow down. Yeah. Sure. They flashed all the time. I suspect they never stop flashing...

Taxi accelerates to 130 (on the clock anyway). This in itself is not so bad but he was about two feet behind the car in front. All the way in to City Centro. Ripping around anything that moved or was in the way or what. Ignore all indicators - if you get by fast enough they don't count. By the time we got where we were going my feet were through the floorboards and I was a nervous wreck.

2. Traffic in General:

Everybody in Rome rides a scooter. Lots of 400cc Burgmans and many others of all shapes and sizes. They too ride as the taxi driver drove. All over the place, in and out of every gap, no probs with lane splitting here. Here's one street full of parked scoots. They were everywhere. Note too the "back into" parking of the little car...very common.



I'd have to say I had huge respect for the skill of those riding the scoots. A fifteen inch wheel is very common and probably helps a lot with stability. But many of the roads are cobblestones which are dead slippery when wet. Do the scoots slow down? Course not!


3. Accidents and Road Rage:

Didn't see any of either. Which brings up a very important point. My feeling was very strong that in Rome, it's a case of "we" use "our" road whereas in NZ, it's "I" use "my" road so get out of my way. If a driver was to behave in NZ as they did there, he/she would be yelled and screamed at and probably have the keys confiscated by some righteous twat. Didn't happen there. Now I don't know what the accident rate actually is but I expected to see crashes everywhere given the way the road is used. But I saw none. (I did hear lots of ambulances though so who knows...) The fact is that there appears to be a huge tolerance of that kind of driving. Sure the horn gets honked a lot but I never saw an angry driver nor did I see vertical fingers or any screaming out the window at other drivers. No road rage at all that I saw. If you wanted to cross any road (apart from the large main arteries maybe) you could just put up both hands and walk out. Everybody stops and there is no righteous indignation. It is accepted that the roads are busy and that "we" need to be tolerant. Same goes for lane merges, changing lanes, being held up for a bit and so on.

This I found universal amongst the Italians in general and not just on the roads. Far less individualism and much more of an "us" culture. Which I thought was just wonderful. New Zealand would do well to heed this difference.

More to come...watch this space.

[eldog]

Some of you on here will know that I spent two weeks in Italy recently. I will bore you with the odd article about my impressions thereof plus a few pics.

2. Traffic in General:

Everybody in Rome rides a scooter. Lots of 400cc Burgmans and many others of all shapes and sizes. They too ride as the taxi driver drove. All over the place, in and out of every gap, no probs with lane splitting here.

I'd have to say I had huge respect for the skill of those riding the scoots. A fifteen inch wheel is very common and probably helps a lot with stability. But many of the roads are cobblestones which are dead slippery when wet. Do the scoots slow down? Course not!


3. Accidents and Road Rage:

Didn't see any of either. Which brings up a very important point. My feeling was very strong that in Rome, it's a case of "we" use "our" road whereas in NZ, it's "I" use "my" road so get out of my way.

This I found universal amongst the Italians in general and not just on the roads. Far less individualism and much more of an "us" culture. Which I thought was just wonderful. New Zealand would do well to heed this difference.

More to come...watch this space.

Great story, I was impressed with Italian drivers/riders when I was in Rome.
They all move at once, together, some places I saw 5 or 6 or more abreast. Much like the traffic in Paris and Bangkok.

I am sick of the my 'right' attitude. Maybe I am of the old school thought of working together.

looking forward to more about your trip

[Mike.Gayner]

We were in Rome last year. We had been warned about the taxi drivers and traffic, but I dismissed those warnings as exaggerations. The traffic is crazy over there - just as bad as everyone says. Everyone drives hyper-aggressively, and extremely close. We saw one rear-ending, no rage involved (though unsurprisingly it was a taxi driver).

Motorists there all drive extremely closely to the vehicle in front, but everyone seems to have extremely well sharpened reaction times.

[eldog]

We were in Rome last year. We had been warned about the taxi drivers and traffic, but I dismissed those warnings as exaggerations. The traffic is crazy over there - just as bad as everyone says. Everyone drives hyper-aggressively, and extremely close. We saw one rear-ending, no rage involved (though unsurprisingly it was a taxi driver).

Motorists there all drive extremely closely to the vehicle in front, but everyone seems to have extremely well sharpened reaction times.

A good sense of community getting together and getting on with it and each other.

practise, practise, practise. they are born into it. Crossing the road a km down from the Termini train station was an experience - 5 multi lanes all converging in one junction

[slofox]

4. Food:

One picture is worth a thousand words they say...this shop smelt like heaven inside.



Food is cheap compared to New Zealand. Espresso 80cents in Rome. Cornetto (criossant) 1.50 euro. etc Even later, when we were on an offshore island, where everything was brought in by boat, cheese (for example) was half the price it is in NZ and way better as well. And of course a decent wine could be had for about 5 euro - $7.50 ish in kiwi cash. There was a product in one shop called AlcoPuro...95%...made grappa look like pussy stuff. I decided not to test it.

Med diet seemed to suit well - lots of bread and olive oil and salads etc, not much meat but felt pretty good.


5. Salina:

Salina is one of the Isole Eolie group (Aeolian Islands) just off the north coast of Sicily. Which was the purpose of the trip. My siblings and I were looking out the birth place of our paternal grandfather. He was born on Salina in the village of Leni in 1873.

The island group is pretty much volcanic in origin. Stromboli still steams away in the middle distance and one of the local group, Volcano, is somewhat akin to Rotorua - steam vents, hot mud (you can bathe in it if you are brave - or maybe stupid and don't mind stinking for a week afterwards). Smells much worse than Rotorua as well.

Salina itself is a pair of volcanic cones, inactive for the past 13,000 years according to the guide books. Population somewhere around 3000. Total area is about 28 square kilometres and is fucking steep. We actually climbed over the smaller of the two cones - 870 m high approx but much harder than the track around the larger cone (980m high). Thought I might die on the way up but didn't (must be the med food eh). Down the other side was interesting too - millions of bright green skinks with the longest tail you ever saw were everywhere.

There are some six settlements on Salina. The largest and most important I guess is Malfa but we stayed in Santa Marina. Lovely place lovely people and fantastic food. Also lots of locally produced Malvasia - a dessert wine that the locals refer to as "our golden sunshine in a bottle" which was delicious. We stayed here for the bulk of the trip - some 10 days.

The water around these islands is crystal clear - you can see all the way to the bottom. Volcanic rock doesn't shed much sediment which explains the clarity. Piccie here

[Mike.Gayner]

From my experience some food was cheap compared to NZ (coffee, booze, baked goods), some about the same price (meals out, cheese) and some was more expensive (some fresh foods, non-cured meats). The quality of fresh food was fantastic, but if anyone is visiting Rome I strongly suggest you get recommendations of where to eat from someone who knows. There's a shit load of very average food in Rome and it's really hard to find something decent. Even Trip Advisor wasn't great for this, because it seems to cater for American tastes (lots of melted cheese and salt). In the smaller towns like around Tuscany it's hard to go wrong, almost everything is good.

edit: I should mention that when we went last year 1 euro = NZD$2. It sounds like everything is a lot cheaper now with 1 euro = NZD$1.50, but that's more to do with a strong NZD than cheap local food.

[Moi]

Stop, stop! STOP!!

This is not fair!!

You are making me envious... Hang-on, will be in Italy later this year for three weeks... [after a couple of months in other parts of Western Europe]

OK, looking forward to the next episode of your Italian adventures.

[MisterD]

I spent a couple of weeks in Sicily about a decade ago and the standard of driving (bearing in mind that I was a high-mileage pommie Sales Rep who thought he'd seen it all as far as idiotic driving was concerned) appalled me, especially the amount of overtaking on blind corners.

I remember one day queuing for about an hour or so to get past the site of an accident where some idiot had overtaken on a blind corner, managed to avoid a head-on with another car but clipped it and rammed his little Fiat straight into a stone wall. Crumple zone? That would have been the bit of the car between the front and rear bumpers. Anyway, we got past the carnage and not five minutes later, into another blind corner we were...yep, overtaken.

[R650R]

Good story and sounds like you had same experiences as me. We had taxi driver doing 140km/h in pissing down rain from Imola WSBK to Forli airport at 6am on a Monday, oh this was on a NZ style road not a motorway!

Same with Taxi driver in Spain, wondered why everyone made mad dash to the taxis, that was to get the good ones. I ended up with Kojac in Nato green jacket and a Peugoet 405 station wagon that did nothing less than 70mph around every roundabout, the best was when he exited from the inside lane across four lanes of traffic.

Same as you never saw crashes in Italy but hey you can do the same in Auckland too some days... the horn is good, they like to alert others of presence, not like here where its a giant whinge button after the hazard.

Lucky basterd, Jealous! We did Rome, Naples, Palermo, Bologna/Imola about ten years ago.... would love to go back....

[eelracing]

You go all the way to Italy and all you can talk about is traffic and food.
where the fuck are the pics of italian lolitas?

[Moi]

You go all the way to Italy and all you can talk about is traffic and food.
where the fuck are the pics of italian lolitas?

He's an old geezer, he used a Box Brownie, he's waiting for the film to be developed...

[slofox]

You go all the way to Italy and all you can talk about is traffic and food.
where the fuck are the pics of italian lolitas?

Here...bear in mind it was only mid spring and the Lolitas were scarce on the ground.



The soft toy is another story altogether

[slofox]

6. Bikes (the reason I started this boreolog...)

I didn't see a lot of bikes at all. Obvious enough in Rome but nowhere else we went. Salina is not suited to many bikes, roads are narrow and very tight and there are few options if someone wants to share your bit of road - there's nowhere to go except into the cliff face or into (and maybe over) the guard rail...

My crazed brother wanted to hire scooters from the local rental. I foolishly agreed. I hate scooters anyway - feel grossly unstable etc etc. And this time I was the insane tourist who had never driven on RHS roads ever, on a clapped out auto scoot. "Where the hell are the foot pegs? Oh shit, there aren't any..." I was worried about some righteous local detaining me and removing the keys from the scoot...

As it turned out, after getting one horn honk at 20 seconds, it wasn't so hard but the roads are really narrow and tight and precipitous if you fall off. Like this one...



Looks great from half way up a volcano but there's not a lot of room for too many sporty bikes. I think the whole road system might be about 40 km in total length. Not really a bikers paradise...most people seemed to drive these...



nuff said

[Oscar]

6. Bikes (the reason I started this boreolog...)


Looks great from half way up a volcano but there's not a lot of room for too many sporty bikes. I think the whole road system might be about 40 km in total length. Not really a bikers paradise...most people seemed to drive these...



nuff said

Ape - Bumble Bee.

I watched slack jawed as commuting scooters (those 400 Yamaha things seemed popular) went past two up on wet cobblestones full noise in the narrow streets of Florence. Mental.

[JimO]

had a month in china the driving there is just as bad