The Italian Similarity
I have been reading this travelogue, Neither Here Nor There , where Bill Bryson talks very humorously of his travels through most of Europe. His experience in Italy got me thinking: Rome, Naples, Milan and Florence. Bryson found corruption to be rampant. People parked their cars whichever way they liked, drivers didn’t follow any rules (in fact nobody followed any rules). Beggars and pickpockets targeted tourists and cops wouldn’t register complaints. The Italians didn’t bother to maintain their museums or other tourist attractions: Bryson says (and I don’t know if he said that tongue in cheek or if it’s true) that the Colosseum isn’t the ruin that it is because of wear and tear, rather it is a ruin because people used to chip away at it with sledgehammers and take the chunks to kilns to make cement! That reminded me of a comment one of our neighbours had made decades back, “What great ruins the Italians make!” Back then, we were amused by his lack of understanding of the...