After all this bad-mouthing about Singapore. I just thought it to be fair a bit of bad-mouthing about Catania, my Sicilian home-town.
I had a German colleague of mine, when I was based in Rome a couple of years ago, who once announced he would go south to Sicily, and asked me advice on places to visit.
I emailed him a list of things I like and dislike of Catania.
The 'cons' of Catania list:
1) Walking around is difficult: pavements are too narrow for people to peacefully walk, often cars are parked on pavements, and because no law is enforced for people to clean after their dogs, everywhere is littered with shit. Bike lanes are non existent. When it rains, water is not properly drained. This results in huge puddles (a bit more like ponds) that you may safely walk around if you are lucky enough not to get splashed or run over by some car.
2) Noise: cars are often parked either on the sidewalk or in two or three parallel lines. This results in people's cars being occasionally trapped, with the trapped-car-owner continuously honking in the intent of drawing the attention of the blocking-car-owner, who's possibly too busy buying bread or window-watching by the beautifully adorned shops to be bothered. Furthermore, here people modify their motorbikes' exhausts, to make their vehicles faster and get more easily noticed by passer-bys. This powerful mix of roaring/honking cars and screaming motorbikes makes the whole town a hell for anyone venturing downtown on foot.
3) Poor customer service: landing a job in Italy, but specially in the South, is no matter of merit. Private enterprises are often very small and generally face little competition: they tend to employ family members or close friends. Some of them serve as a cover for illicit business, as money-laundries or both, and couldn't care less about staying profitable. The Sicilian public sector is a 'votes container' at the local politicians' disposal: politicians secure people a job in the public service in exchange for votes. This means that once employed, these people are unmovable: in Italy no law is enforced enabling dismissal of staff for even the most serious reasons. The widest majority of workers in the South are employed in the public sector: the lack of risk and the lack of incentives for these workers cause a spread of idleness in both the public and private sector. It is funny to witness how the 'contractual power' is reversed in Sicily, with patrons happy to pay the highest price in town for a pair of shoes just to show friends and people around them that 'they are rich enough not to care'; or people almost begging in banks or post offices for the teller to take their case.
4) Pollution, pervasive concrete, bad eating habits and cancer: following a complete lack of urban planning and a misled decision making process, - aimed to short term boosting of wealth and power for the few, regardless the quality of life for the many - pollution has massively increased from the 70s to our days.
In the 70s, most of Sicily was taken by the urge of building. Construction, the most profitable business Mafia decided to embark on at that time, had to be quick and cheap: the need for green areas, seen as not profitable, was simply overlooked. Now my region is a mess of gray, amorphous concrete with massive urbanized outskirts stretching along the coast in such way that all towns are linked together and no countryside has survived. Because of the complete lack of public transportation services, the traffic of people commuting by car went mad and the whole look and livability of the towns fell to depressive levels.
I suspect that, alongside pollution, bad eating habits started surging in those years as well. More industrial products became available, and this new food, requiring easy or no cooking at all, with its immediate palatability, catered well to the masses. Also the poor quality of life, the lack of satisfaction, together with the little spending power has led many families to devote larger slices of their earnings to quick, cheap, palatable food. Any time I visit it strikes me the sight of cars lining up on Sunday mornings to the massive Auchan or Carrefour malls, where people often spend the whole day, eating junk food and buying things they don't really need and still get very shortly excited about. These 'trips' took over the 'gite', the hikes to the once beautiful countryside. I suspect that due to pollution and bad eating habits, cancer is massively spreading in the whole of Southern Italy. But when I was based in Rome, I searched at ISTAT - the governmental institute for national statistics - and couldn't find any reliable statistics linking number of cancer cases to place of residence. The only analysis I could find would only be based on the number of cancer cases treated by hospitals within each Italian region: which means little, since most Southern Italians seek treatment in Northern Italy hospitals.
5) Other day-by-day annoyances: these minor consequences of the aforementioned issues are part of the day by day experience:
- Bumpy roads: workers don't properly fix them, limiting their effort to simply fill holes with patches of tarmac;
- Wasting one hour looking for a parking spot any time you go downtown by car;
- Fighting with the omnipresent abusive valet who subtly threatens you to cut your tires should you fail to tip him;
- Cars and motorbikes never stopping at zebra crossings, and rather engaging themselves in the very attended pastime of swaying among 'pedestrian skittles';
- People working in bars never greeting you;
- People always checking you out in bars: the way you dress, the way you look, how rich you may be, always in the quest to suss out whether or not you are cool enough for the place. Many bars are regarded as 'VIP bars' and you may be denied access at the door should you not be on the 'guest list'. People actually believe the more a bar is "fussy" with customers, the more is cool and worth trying to get in.
- Here people are permanently horny!!! They keep talking about sex but never get enough by their standars.
-Physical exercise is not encouraged and often not viable due to poor town planning and lack of public facilities.
The 'pros' of Catania list:
1) Great pubs: any time I visit I almost believe I am back in Dublin.
2) Everywhere people playing and singing.
3) Great nightlife till three-four in the morning.
4) Great food!!!!
5) Some nice "ethnic" or "environment friendly" shops or restaurants that show you how much people from Catania are creative and curious about what's going on in the world.
6) Because Catania is close to an American Military Base, it's nice to see how much "Catanesi" (people from Catania) and Americans are getting close and making friendship.
7) Clear sky, beautiful warm sun for most of winter.
8) You can swimm and then drive up the Etna volcano on the same day and ski.
9) In winter, loads of "sagre" (food fairs): my favourite is the "sagra del fungo" (Mushrooms Fair) in a place called Zafferana, on the volcano.
I had a German colleague of mine, when I was based in Rome a couple of years ago, who once announced he would go south to Sicily, and asked me advice on places to visit.
I emailed him a list of things I like and dislike of Catania.
The 'cons' of Catania list:
1) Walking around is difficult: pavements are too narrow for people to peacefully walk, often cars are parked on pavements, and because no law is enforced for people to clean after their dogs, everywhere is littered with shit. Bike lanes are non existent. When it rains, water is not properly drained. This results in huge puddles (a bit more like ponds) that you may safely walk around if you are lucky enough not to get splashed or run over by some car.
2) Noise: cars are often parked either on the sidewalk or in two or three parallel lines. This results in people's cars being occasionally trapped, with the trapped-car-owner continuously honking in the intent of drawing the attention of the blocking-car-owner, who's possibly too busy buying bread or window-watching by the beautifully adorned shops to be bothered. Furthermore, here people modify their motorbikes' exhausts, to make their vehicles faster and get more easily noticed by passer-bys. This powerful mix of roaring/honking cars and screaming motorbikes makes the whole town a hell for anyone venturing downtown on foot.3) Poor customer service: landing a job in Italy, but specially in the South, is no matter of merit. Private enterprises are often very small and generally face little competition: they tend to employ family members or close friends. Some of them serve as a cover for illicit business, as money-laundries or both, and couldn't care less about staying profitable. The Sicilian public sector is a 'votes container' at the local politicians' disposal: politicians secure people a job in the public service in exchange for votes. This means that once employed, these people are unmovable: in Italy no law is enforced enabling dismissal of staff for even the most serious reasons. The widest majority of workers in the South are employed in the public sector: the lack of risk and the lack of incentives for these workers cause a spread of idleness in both the public and private sector. It is funny to witness how the 'contractual power' is reversed in Sicily, with patrons happy to pay the highest price in town for a pair of shoes just to show friends and people around them that 'they are rich enough not to care'; or people almost begging in banks or post offices for the teller to take their case.
4) Pollution, pervasive concrete, bad eating habits and cancer: following a complete lack of urban planning and a misled decision making process, - aimed to short term boosting of wealth and power for the few, regardless the quality of life for the many - pollution has massively increased from the 70s to our days.In the 70s, most of Sicily was taken by the urge of building. Construction, the most profitable business Mafia decided to embark on at that time, had to be quick and cheap: the need for green areas, seen as not profitable, was simply overlooked. Now my region is a mess of gray, amorphous concrete with massive urbanized outskirts stretching along the coast in such way that all towns are linked together and no countryside has survived. Because of the complete lack of public transportation services, the traffic of people commuting by car went mad and the whole look and livability of the towns fell to depressive levels.
I suspect that, alongside pollution, bad eating habits started surging in those years as well. More industrial products became available, and this new food, requiring easy or no cooking at all, with its immediate palatability, catered well to the masses. Also the poor quality of life, the lack of satisfaction, together with the little spending power has led many families to devote larger slices of their earnings to quick, cheap, palatable food. Any time I visit it strikes me the sight of cars lining up on Sunday mornings to the massive Auchan or Carrefour malls, where people often spend the whole day, eating junk food and buying things they don't really need and still get very shortly excited about. These 'trips' took over the 'gite', the hikes to the once beautiful countryside. I suspect that due to pollution and bad eating habits, cancer is massively spreading in the whole of Southern Italy. But when I was based in Rome, I searched at ISTAT - the governmental institute for national statistics - and couldn't find any reliable statistics linking number of cancer cases to place of residence. The only analysis I could find would only be based on the number of cancer cases treated by hospitals within each Italian region: which means little, since most Southern Italians seek treatment in Northern Italy hospitals.
5) Other day-by-day annoyances: these minor consequences of the aforementioned issues are part of the day by day experience:
- Bumpy roads: workers don't properly fix them, limiting their effort to simply fill holes with patches of tarmac;
- Wasting one hour looking for a parking spot any time you go downtown by car;
- Fighting with the omnipresent abusive valet who subtly threatens you to cut your tires should you fail to tip him;
- Cars and motorbikes never stopping at zebra crossings, and rather engaging themselves in the very attended pastime of swaying among 'pedestrian skittles';
- People working in bars never greeting you;
- People always checking you out in bars: the way you dress, the way you look, how rich you may be, always in the quest to suss out whether or not you are cool enough for the place. Many bars are regarded as 'VIP bars' and you may be denied access at the door should you not be on the 'guest list'. People actually believe the more a bar is "fussy" with customers, the more is cool and worth trying to get in.
- Here people are permanently horny!!! They keep talking about sex but never get enough by their standars.
-Physical exercise is not encouraged and often not viable due to poor town planning and lack of public facilities.
The 'pros' of Catania list:
1) Great pubs: any time I visit I almost believe I am back in Dublin.
2) Everywhere people playing and singing.
3) Great nightlife till three-four in the morning.
4) Great food!!!!
5) Some nice "ethnic" or "environment friendly" shops or restaurants that show you how much people from Catania are creative and curious about what's going on in the world.
6) Because Catania is close to an American Military Base, it's nice to see how much "Catanesi" (people from Catania) and Americans are getting close and making friendship.
7) Clear sky, beautiful warm sun for most of winter.
8) You can swimm and then drive up the Etna volcano on the same day and ski.
9) In winter, loads of "sagre" (food fairs): my favourite is the "sagra del fungo" (Mushrooms Fair) in a place called Zafferana, on the volcano.
2 comments:
couldn't help but laugh out loud. i think people in the corridor might think i'm mad.
Caro Attiliazzo paramazzo!!!! Vero รจ che ormai sei anglofilo e giramondo, ma quando torni in Sicily mi fa piacere se "ni pigghiamu 'nna granita 'nzemi"!!!abbracci, Michele (michelespada@tiscali.it)
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