Guide to being Italian

HOW TO BE ITALIANO VERO IN 10 EASY STEPS

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This article was created in March 2017, while I was studying in Italy

 

I have been living amongst crazy Italians for six week. This whole time I have been trying to blend in with the crowds, local habits and culture, and I have made some progress. I say “Ciao, Bella” to everybody I meet and kiss them on both cheeks, I spend most of my free time in cafes and eat my weight in pasta each day. I am undistinguishable from the locals and consider myself capable of giving you the advice you never asked for. So, what is the secret of being true Italian?

1. An Italian is never on time, under any circumstances. And when it looks like he is about to reach the meeting point exactly on time, he stops for a coffee on his way. Just to be sure he doesn´t ruin his reputation.

2. As I already said, an Italian drinks coffee. He drinks it very often and he loves it. Standing at the bar, sitting at the table, with his friends or alone, savouring the cup for hours or drinking it quickly with one big sip. But he doesn´t drink cappuccino. And when he does, it is only in the morning, paired with a cornetto or other sweet treat. If you order cappuccino in Italy in the afternoon, your tourist status will be detected soon. Lucky for me, there is plenty of international students who don´t know about this rule, so I can enjoy my afternoon cappuccino without the weird looks.

This is a breakfast. This is not an afternoon snack. 

3. An Italian will kiss you on both cheeks after knowing you for three minutes. And he doesn´t care that you have your own personal space and you don´t even let your relatives enter it, let alone a stranger. After a while you get used to it and start using this neat trick to scare your friends, who don´t know about this strange but somehow nice habit.

4. An Italian speaks Italian (duh!). But to look like you have mastered the language you don´t have to spend hours and hours with your nose stuck in a language textbook and repeating tha grammar rules until midnight. It is sufficient to teach your hands how to be Italian. Use them to show everybody your massive “perqué” gesture and you will look like you were born on Sicily at least.  

Mastering italian has never been so easy!

5. A true Italian has a beard. Whether his facial hair is copied from dystopian young adult movies or he is going for the sexy lumberjack style, you can be sure, that all the hair on his chin will be perfectly trimmed and not one of them will ever step outside of its place. In every drop of his nonchalance there are long hours spent in the barber shop.

6. Italians love to talk on the phone and complain to their friends how foolish all the people drinking cappuccinos in the afternoon are. But an Italian will not be holding his phone by his ear, that would be a waste of energy. He used his headphones, and if he forgets them at home, he will just use the speakerphone. This way his hands remain free to massively gesture wherever he goes – on the street, in the pub, on the bus, anywhere…

7. Obeying the light signals on the street is for losers and foreigners, it is certainly not for Italians. The only pedestrians who actually stop at red are stupid tourists holding their phones by their ears, drinking cappuccino in the afternoon. True Italian doesn´t have time to wait for the light to turn green again. The careful ones will looked both ways before crossing the road, but most of them just jump into the traffic fearlessly. I mean, the cars kind of HAVE to stop, amiright?

8. From what you have read so far, it may seem like Italians don´t really follow the rules. But truth be told, they actually are the masters of following the rules. But only if they are explicitly written in shining neon lights on a giant sign, underlined twice and with seven exclamation points. For example, smoking at the toilet. You would say it is self-evident that smoking in public restrooms is forbidden. But in Italy this has to be mentioned in every restroom several times. The No Smoking sign is not just in restrooms, but also in classrooms or city buses. There is even a sign by the river which says that bathing and swimming in it is strictly forbidden. Just to be sure it is several languages (including Czech but excluding German – I guess some people just cost more problems than others). And it doesn´t really matter that the river is 200 meters away from the sign and the water wouldn´t reach higher than to your knees.

To make it perfectly clear, you are not supposed to swim either in the grass behind the sign, nor in the river (if you can find it).

9. An Italian used any chance he has to join a demonstration, no matter the cost. For female rights, against global warming, for equality of snowman or against circus clowns. Any day can be a protest day. Any opportunity to grab a megaphone, block the streets and hand out fliers should be seized. Just yesterday someone tried to persuade me to join their anti-EU protest. As and Erasmus student I politely declined.

10. And lastly, and I can´t stress this enough, an Italian NEVER EVER puts pineapple to his pizza. Pineapple is the arch nemesis of pizzas worldwide and it doesn´t belong on it no more than strawberries to goulash. And it doesn´t matter that you love Hawaii pizza more than your mother. As long as you are in Italy, don´t you dare even thinking about it!

 

Congratulation, you just became a true Italian