My friend Rob. Italy Dispelled

alright, i've only been here a short while... but here are some of the initial rules to pretending to fit in italia. You'll stick out like a sore thumb still, but everyones gotta start somewhere.

1. if you are female, your sunglasses aren't big enough

2. if you are male, keep your sunglasses on at all time. Inside, outside, sunny, cloudy, in the movie theater.

3. Coffee rules: if its morning, take an espresso or cappucino, drink it standing up at the counter literally as fast as humanly possible. if it is afternoon, take an espresso only. Nothing except espresso is drunk after 12pm, unless it has liquor in it. You still stand up at the counter, but feel free to take 2 or 3 additional minutes to drink your drink.

4. Driving rules: this could be a whole separate list, but here are the basics. Pedal to the metal, don't stop for shit. Ever. While traffic lights are a mandatory stop, stop signs, yield signs, and round-abouts are full-gas all the time. Speed limits are completely arbitrary and totally meaningless on the highways--just keep you foot on the floor. Perhaps the most important rule on the highway is: Don't drive in the left lane unless you are passing. You may think you are trucking along at 145kph, but that small dot of light in your rearview is a BMW 7-series doing 240kph and he won't stop until he bumps you out of the way NASCAR style.

5. Eat salted/cured pork products every 4 hours. I am not sure how many pigs there are in northern Italy, but they eat the living daylights out of prosciutto in so many different forms i can't even start to list them here.

A side note on meat here: the best stuff you can buy in the US is like the crappiest stuff in the super-market here. Whole Foods, Boars Head, you name it... it sucks compared to what these people are putting out.