So long and thanks for all the food

I spent five months living in Milan, and while I had every intention to write about my time and experiences in the motherland in more detail, things didn’t quite turn out as I’d planned. I’ll probably end up writing more about it once I leave tomorrow, like I’ve done with Japan. I’m flying out in less than 24h but there’s still time to get a little something in.

Following from my recent post about the similarities between Italy and Japan, something else came to my mind today which I’d forgot to mention. The banking systems in both countries are retarded, antiquated and fairly infuriating. I’ve got four bank accounts in four countries, and I ain’t saying this because I’m rolling in it, far from it considering I have hardly any money in any of them, and by far the worst countries to be dealing with banks or just using them are Japan and Italy.

I wrote about the wonders and hilarities of the Japanese banking system shortly after I moved to Tokyo, and I really didn’t think it could get worse than Japan. Until I moved to Italy. Downsides of the banking system here far seem to outweight any benefits, like actually having a bank account. First surprise was when my mom explained that in Italy the bank charges you every quarter just for having a bank account. While the sum is minimal, less than 10 Euros for a quarter, it’s still a fairly unbelievable practice when you think about it. That was the start though, then I learnt that, as in Japan, you get charged for withdrawing money anywhere that isn’t a branch of your bank, branches close early and aren’t open at the weekend and what’s more you basically get charged for doing pretty much anything that resembles a banking transaction. Today I got charged 6 Euros to send money from my account to another one held by the same bank. Basically if you can avoid banking in Italy do it.

The whole bank thing goes hand in hand with just how painful anything remotely administrative can be in Italy too: whether it’s registering at the town hall, going to the post office or opening a bank account. Come to think of it, that’s also something Italy and Japan have in common. On the plus side at least in Italy I can understand what is going on, even if it’s as surreal and annoying as it was in Japan or most other countries.

That’s the thing I’ve come to realise about moving back here. As much as Italy does have some great aspects, it’s still pretty backwards. Growing up here I always thought to myself that I’d never come back to live because Italy always struck me as backwards. Everything always seemed to be, and actually was, a few years behind France and other countries I’d go to, whether it was technology or entertainment (two things that can rank quite highly in life priorities when you’re a kid, before you get a clue), and then Italy also has the whole ‘slow’ thing going on. A bit like Spain, but not as bad, Italians like to take their time to do things, whether it’s a job or a lunch.

Coming back nearly 15 years later, I decided to see if this idea I had as a kid still held up or whether it was a bit of a youthful misunderstanding. Five months on, the verdict is 50-50. Italy is still backwards in various ways, but it’s also weirdly quite ahead in others and the combination of both is actually quite a strange thing to get to grips with.

If you take the various things I mentioned above about banking and dealing with the administrative system, Italy is still definitely a bit behind. To be fair even the countries that are ‘ahead’ have their own retarded processes, but Italy seems to have more of them and you come across them more often. In various aspects of day to day life, Italy is still a few years behind everyone else in terms of modernity, processes, technology etc… On the other hand they’re also quite scarily advanced in other aspects, like for example the use of smart card technology and various other automatic identification technologies and their implementations in public and private services and spaces. For example, the social security card for the region of Lombardy is a smart card that gives you access to a whole bunch of services online and at home, services that can be accessed by buying a smart card reader at the local newsagent. Thing is while the technology is there, the uses are sometimes still a little lacking. The services the social security card gives you access to are fairly pointless ones at the moment. Not even in Japan could you buy a smart card reader at the newsagents though.

When I was a kid I didn’t really understand or see past certain things, like technology, today I can see the bigger picture a little better. While Italy has a lot going for it, food, culture, weather, warm and welcoming locals, countryside, you get the picture, it can also be a massive pain in the neck to actually live here, from the insane amounts of administrative crap you have to deal with at every turn to the sometimes backwards way of doing stuff. In Japan, things like that could easily be put down to cultural differences. In Italy though I struggle a bit more, especially considering the whole integration with Europe and all that, even though a lot of what makes Italy infuriating does boil down to cultural differences. If anything my time here, and in Japan, has shown me that I actually quite like anglo-saxon societies, a lot more than I thought I did. Which is probably why I am going back there.

A few of my British friends can’t understand why I’d want to go back to London, and I must admit I sometimes struggle myself, but if I’m honest in the end there’s a lot about anglo-saxon societies that is taken for granted by those who grew up there but which actually makes living in those societies a lot easier than any others I’ve lived in. When you compare what anglo-saxon societies offer on a day to day basis compared to more latin societies like Italy, France or Spain, there’s a lot that makes more sense there socially and culturally. At the same time, latin societies also have things that the anglo-saxon need more of, like a love of good food, a different understanding of ‘drinking’ and a much more relaxed approach to life in general. Thing is when it comes to living somewhere, I might just take the anglo-saxons over the latins for now. There’s always the Japanese too if it all gets too much.