Not in Kansas Anymore: A Final Word on Italy

In 17 days here in Italy:

1) Inspect (and utilize) hotel bathrooms in six different cities.

2) Discover bidets in every one.

3) Consider using them to wash doll clothes in as preschool cousin Kathleen once did with every toilet within reach.

4) Find an alarm in every bathroom, generally placed above bathtub. In America can DIE in tub and all they do is charge you the extra night.

5) Experience double-take moment regarding the many aprons and tea towels showing outsize images of male genitalia passing selves off as “details”of the David.  What happened to towels featuring dead Lady Di?

6) Learn to drink coffee standing up, down the hatch and strong as Drano.

Observe even more:

+ Modern young mums nursing in public. Nobody stares.

+ Little children out at all hours.

+ Absence of bug life. (How they DO that?)

+ Absence of litter. (How they do THAT?)

+ Presence of quiet dawns, raucous midnights, yummy wines and aperitifs.

+ Clocks in local basilica sounding the hours.

+ One fly, just ONE fly in this Ointment of Eden....... (Are you ready?)

+ Entire population smoking like chimneys.

Viva Veritas!

The graphic seen on all Exit signs here in Italy is of a little green guy running like hell for his very life, but let’s tell they truth here: when it comes to actual languages, some are a lot prettier than others:

Here’s the English on the plastic bag the typical hotel provides for your dirty laundry: “Linen to be washed and ironed,” it says. Then there's the French phrase for the same thing: “Linge à laver ou à repasser,” It's OK but it's nothing great, right? And forget the message in German: “Schmutz-oder bügelwäsche. ””Schmuz? Oder?” I mean how unpretty is that?

But in Italian? In Italian the message is just plain sublime. Dirty clothes or not you just can’t argue with “Biancheria da lavare o stirare.”It makes you want to break into song, am I wrong? And it almost- ALMOST - makes you forget how very frank and practical Europeans really are, because not only do the Exit signs tell it like it is and even though I myself just used it to wash my socks in, this little dandy gizmo which we have seen in four of our last four hotels really IS what Mick Dundee called it in that cute first movie that bears his name!