I think the thing that struck me most those first few days in Florence, was a general shift in convenience. Things in Florence were difficult to sort out and space was limited. In LA, I could do virtually everything in life by phone or text or at Target. I worked from home the last year and half before moving and I rarely needed to leave my home. I ordered food for delivery, Amazon brought everything I could ever need directly to my doorstep. Everything was easy and right at my finger tips. The Fiat van situation would never in a million years happen in California and if it did, the rental company would have had to arranged new transport for us and we wouldn’t have expected to be charged for the broken down craziness. In Italy, not so much. In general, things were not easy and by that, I mean things were hard and frustrating. Things were not convenient. The rental company said that it wasn’t their fault the van broke down, it could happen to anyone, at anytime, for any reason. Ok, well that is just …true. The American, the LA’er in me wants to argue, but it is true. And oddly, the situation eventually ended up in our favor by being allowed to drive to the door to the house. But still, my instincts were to ask for the manager, to raise my voice and threaten to stop payment. It wouldn’t have mattered. It was the first lesson in going with the flow Italian style.
There was no space bubble In Florence. The city can be very crowded with tourists. People would run smack into you without batting an eye. I once had a girl literally walk into my face and smash her head into my eye and she just bounced off my face and kept walking. It took me months to not be offended and annoyed. At a certain point, I started to get it. I needed to get somewhere and to do that, I needed to get around or through, if necessary, the people blocking my path, It wasn’t personal. It was strategic. Move or be moved. It was a small city with too many people. There wasn’t room to stay annoyed or offended.
The level of red tape in Florence is something I had never experienced before. In my opinion, many of the government processes are grossly inefficient. For example, if you get a traffic ticket, they mail you a slip that you then take to the post office and pick up your ticket and find out how much you owe. Now, maybe I am crazy but that feels like a whole lot of steps to get punished for speeding. It’s like asking a kid to walk across town to be told they are grounded. There is an overall sense from the Italians I met that they know it is inefficient but it is what it is. They don’t complain about it, they just do it. It is just part of life for them. I had to try and let go of the way I thought things should be and instead tried to figure them out to the best of my ability so I could get things done and stay calm. Florence’s style was much more of a personal process. The set up requires people to leave their homes and interact with each other. There, you don’t make appointments online, you call and talk to someone or you walk in and do it in person. It is a pain sometimes, ok, a lot of the time, it takes longer, but it is a much more human approach. You talk to someone, look at someone to get things done. It’s oddly refreshing and exhausting at the same time.
