9. Italians love life and want you to experience it all—the food, the wine, the music, the culture. Italy is a sensory delight. The term joie de vivre, although French, is spot on for Italians and their attitude toward life. Maybe it’s the sun and great weather. Maybe it’s the long, long history of troubles and peace and troubles and peace again and again so that living for today is most important.
8. The average person on the street or in any chance encounter that brought an opportunity for discussion resulted in the person (taxi driver, people waiting in lines, etc.) wanting to say that they had hope for America because of Barack Obama.
7. We Americans have no sense of history. (Actually I already knew that, but being in places with buildings that are 3000 years old gives renewed meaning to the concept.) And I have some big holes in my education/knowledge of history. Sometimes my knowledge of history was downright flawed and misguided, sometimes lacking the whole story, and sometimes absent altogether.
6. It’s all about the churches! Art, culture, daily life, wars are all dependent upon the dictates of the church. Before Christianity, the Roman and Greek gods determined everything in life. Religion was the be-all and end-all of life. When society had only two classes—the very, very rich and the very, very poor, it often took the promises of the hereafter to maintain the status quo. But of course, there were always the barbarians at the gate, who had their own religion.
5. The churches are full of priceless art, treasures of gold, silver, and jewels, relics of saints, marbles hauled from distant lands by slaves captured in wars to expand the empire and the spiritual legacy of generations of believers.
4. The landscape is intense. High mountains and flat plains and ocean all around give a sense that you’d better take it all in right now because it will soon change into something else. In the U.S. changes are gradual: it takes Kansas and most of Colorado to get to those Rockies! In Italy it may be a half-hour drive to the next change in scenery.
3. Food: I’m not sure that anyone does it better than the Italians. Cheese, olives, lemons, tomatoes, bread, fish (clams, mussels, squid, white fish), pasta—more kinds and shapes than is even possible—, and wine, wine, wine. In one shop window we saw flat noodle-like pasta in striped colors of red, green, and yellow. (Our American pastas are pathetic choices in comparison, bland and uninspired.). Italians do food magnanimously—not necessarily bigger but bolder, finer, and more imaginative.
2. Travel gives perspective. I'm grateful for the opportunity to be out of my comfort zone, experiencing life as others know it.
1. Tuscany: everything they say is true. I think this must be what heaven is like. I hope this is what God has in mind anyway.
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