Italian Post Script: Two Things

Thing, the First:

A Conversation

I forgot to mention a conversation that Corrie and I had while on the train to the beach on the last full day.

Riding trains all over both Rome and Naples one will see, on the occasion of being above ground, what the population centers of the city look like. And they're buildings, tall, tall buildings.

Riding through Naples above ground, I got to thinking about where we'd been in Rome and in the quick hours in Palermo and Naples: one thing you never saw were houses, like single family, single story homes. Maybe there are neighborhoods like that somewhere, but we certainly never saw any.

I remembered a conversation I had with Norm's birth mom, or rather, I remember her reaction to a photo from Marc's place in the East Village in Manhattan: "I can't believe people would want to live that close together," she'd said with a shudder.

Is this an American thing, I asked Corrie, is the idea of living in your own little house, with some outdoor space close by, like in a "sub-urban" area of like-designed places, is that an American thing? Do they have those here, tidy little neighborhoods with rows of yards and single-family homes?

She laughed with a twinge of scoff and educated me on Levittown, the name given to William Levitt's housing developments, originally in Pennsylvania. This was the first "suburbia," and Levitt needed to convince townships that the folks in overcrowded inner cities (and let's remember that he means WHITE people in overcrowded inner cities) would love to move into these sub-urban neighborhoods. Time has proved him correct for America.

Suburbia is an uniquely American invention, and that's why, NO, you don't really find anything like that---sprawling areas of sparsely populated neighborhoods---in big European cities.

Thing, the Second

European Hygiene

So...Italians seem to have only a passing interest in using deodorant, and this extends to most of Europe in my memories, and I have no reason to believe that things have changed that dramatically.

I was having the conversation with Lola on the first day we were running around looking for quick food for dinner as we grappled with jet-lag and the like. What you need to reconcile, I told her, as an American in Europe, isn't that everyone has a problem with showering and using deodorant (or not indulging in either), but that WE Americans have a problem with excessive cleanness.

It is us that have the problem, not them. We care too much with being clean and smelling "fresh." Tough sell with an American teenage girl.

But tough sell for me as well, when I find bidets in every single bathroom in apartments, and nearly every single public toilet.

Remember what a bidet is?

It's right next to the toilet and is used to spray water directly on your ass after you drop a deuce. Toilet paper? Sure, they have some, but it's usually terrible, but nice cloths loaded up next to the bidet let you know: you're better off washing and drying your ass instead of wiping it.

Shower? Pass. Deodorant? You silly Americans. 

But super clean buttholes?

Oohhhhh-kaaaay.