Ted Barris

It began innocently enough. I wanted to mail some postcards home. I’d done the hard part – composing some thoughts and finding the addresses. I’d even discovered that postage stamps were available in tobacco stores here. So I searched one out and asked for “francobollo” in my best, fractured Italian. But the tobacconist waved his hands. They didn’t sell stamps anymore. I’d have to go to the post office. There, I found what I thought I needed – wickets, line-ups and clerks – until I reached the front of the line.

“No. No,” the clerk said. He too was waving his hands at me, as if I was contagious. And he shouted at me, “You need ticket!”

“Oh, a first-come first-served system like a bakery,” I thought. “I can do this.”

But when I found the ticket-dispensing machine, I discovered there were four types of tickets for four different services. I deduced, however, that “P” might stand for “postage stamp,” punched the button and got my order-of-service ticket.

It’s no surprise that whenever one travels, these days, one has to deal with some culture shock. For example, in most European countries now, whether the result of 9/11 or not, outsiders have to get used to flashing their passports almost all the time. Another aspect of travel in Italy, for example, is that not all Italians seem eager to accommodate travellers who don’t speak Italian.

And even a familiar-phrase book can’t prepare everybody for some of the subtleties of the culture. Such was the case over the last 10 days as I led a group of Canadian travellers from Pachino to Agira to Messina (in Sicily) to Monte Cassino to Ortona to Rimini and then Rome (in mainland Italy); we were following the path of Canadian troops who liberated the country between July 1943 and May 1945.

In addition to the discoveries we made at museums, monuments and cemeteries about the legacy of the Second World War, we also learned about Italy after the economic crisis. There appear to be more people out of work. Attitudes in the street are different than say before the crash in 2008. Particularly in the food service industry, for example, the atmosphere of entitlement seems to have crept it. I’ll explain.

One mid-day, our group – about 40 Canadian travellers – arrived at a Sicilian restaurant, eager to buy food and drink; the café stood to make a decent profit from us. However, the café owner and his staff seemed more intent on setting the tables for the coming supper clientele than they did on serving us lunch. Our guide summed it up this way.

“Unlike you Canadians who express a great pride in your heritage and your accomplishments openly,” he said, “people here don’t show outwardly the positive things of their country as much as they should.”

Italians may not have the strongest sense of modern entrepreneurship. They do, however, express their pride in other ways. Shortly after we had settled into our hotel in Catania, Sicily, we heard the music of a big brass band through our fourth-floor window.

We stepped onto the balcony and looked down to the street as a Red Cross parade – complete with nurses in period costume, military medics, modern paramedics and banners – made its way down the narrow street in front of our hotel. The organization’s heritage of humanitarian service, universal care and peaceful contribution came through clearly in the music and banners as they marched.

Suddenly, there was an explosion of shouting and the flash of flares. Coming the other direction up the same street with just as many parade participants, came a rowdy soccer demonstration. The young footballers waved flags, carried the coffin of their archrival, Palermo, and chanted Catania team cheers.

For a moment, it appeared the southbound Red Cross parade and the northbound soccer fans would clash in a battle for space on the street. But the Red Cross group gave way until the soccer fans had passed and then simply resumed its historical march. Anywhere else and the collision of parades might have descended into street brawling.

Still there seemed to be something broken or contradictory about the system in Italy. On one hand, the roads and bridges up and down the country seem to be perpetually being improved. Hotels were busy. On the other hand, members of our tour group went to the Rimini train station to catch the only morning train to Ravenna to see the historic mosaics, but the train was inexplicably cancelled. Priorities seemed out of whack.

As for me and my ticket to buy stamps for my postcards?

I discovered that I had pressed the wrong button on the order-of-service sequence machine. I would have to start all over again. I decided against that. I stuck the post cards in my pocket. Chances are I could bring them by hand to my friends and relatives back in Canada faster than the Italian postal service could deliver them anyway.