The Kindness of Strangers

On one of my first trips to Italy I roamed around quite a bit. Lazio, Tuscany, Umbria and Campania. There were a lot of interesting things from that trip but the most memorable ones from a people perspective were in Umbria. I was in Perugia with an ex-girlfriend. She decided that she really wanted to get a haircut. I guess it was just one of those things. Perhaps you know what I mean; everything seems to be going fine and then one day you just wake up and your hair is  just too long and it is suddenly very irritating.  You just can’t wait to get it cut. How else can you explain a sudden desire to get a haircut somewhere that you don’t speak the language. So after some very interesting inquiries involving lots of creative hand motions we found a place that did women’s hair. So, since I was there I decided, what the heck, why not get mine cut also. But, no, they made it clear that they didn’t do men’s hair. They did their best to tell me where I would find a barber shop but they might as well have been speaking chinese. It was impossible. So then the most amazing thing happened. The proprietor assigned a young woman to lead me over a half mile away to a barber shop and to make sure that I could get the point across about getting a haircut. Can you imagine that happening here?

There were two similar if less notable experiences in Orvieto, that very dramatic and beautiful town in southwestern Umbria. We were looking for the cathedral there (magnificent by the way)  and stopped at a shop to ask directions. Like in Perugia, he could have been speaking chinese but he came out from behind the counter and led me out into the street to point the way. I understood enough to get to the first turn and there asked another shopkeeper and he did the same thing. Again I was struck with how so many Italians seemed very willing to go out of their way to help me. That was part of the growing love affair with Italy.

Just one more item – a little bit different. When I spent a month in Rome I frequented a combination bar/tabac very close to the apartment where I was staying and talked regularly, if briefly, to a woman there. While I really enjoyed the month there I was really glad to be getting home at the end of my stay. I told her that I was really happy today. She said something like “ Oh, you’re using the superlative! What makes you so happy?” (she really did say “superlative” but in Italian of course). I said that I was leaving to go home tomorrow. She gave me a genuine look of concern and said, “Oh, that’s too bad that you have to leave Rome.”

Of course I will not go into great detail about the rude Italian waiter in Milano – but of course that is a world away from central Italy and even in Milan was a bit unusual.

Have you had any experiences in Italy that you found especially endearing? Or have you had rude waiters or others that crossed your path?

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 14th, 2010 at 7:45 am and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.