The United States never has to worry about Europe rising to conquer the world like Alexander the Great did once because this current generation will all be dead in 30 years or less. The reason…cigarettes.
I just returned from a couple of weeks in France and Italy (much different from my usual vacation to Statesboro!) and everyone smokes! I realize this is a monumental generalization, but the appearances cannot be wholly deceiving. Everywhere, and I do mean everywhere we went, folks -young and old- were puffing away like a never ending coal smokestack. Even though they had the decency to limit smoking in restaurants and hotels, half the service staff were standing outside their respective places of business on what seemed to be a permanent smoke break. Has the society that spawned Michelangelo and Leonardo not heard the message…this stuff is bad for you? Do the same people who carry the genes of Dante Alighieri and Augustine not get the fact that their lungs are turing into black goo? Maybe it’s their undying sense of carpe diem - living fast, dying young, and leaving a smelly corpse - that propels them toward small cell carcinoma. But whatever the reason, if I wanted to get rich I would open a boutique tobacco shop in every small Italian city.
And what is it with the miniature coffee cups? I realize expresso is very concentrated and “flavorful” but when I was given a cup that looked like it came from my daughter’s doll house, I longed for a simple Starbucks Super Grande Mocha. I hope I am not coming off as an ugly American, but if I am going to pay for a coffee, then give me a dang coffee, not some barely liquified sludge in a thimble.
Okay, maybe I do sound like a culturally insensitive lout, so I will temper my discomfort by something I did find extremely wonderful in Europe and that is the practice of not tipping. I am a terminal cheapskate, so I found this cultural concept refreshing and wise. Of course they build the tip into the cost of the meal, so it all comes out in the wash. If your service is exemplary you are free to reward the staff, but you are not compelled, as in the US, to shell out an extra 15% to a prepubescent, tattooed, and pierced waiter who hasn’t bathed in a week and brought you fish sticks instead of a fish fillet. In general, service was excellent as they knew it had to be to at least gain the possibility of getting a reward, whereas in the US some impudent waiters simply assume they are getting a minimum and the idea of actually working for a tip is lost in their entitlement attitude.
The street vendors in Europe, Italy in particular, are a hearty but respectful bunch. Unlike their counterparts in the Caribbean, where you can feel violated by simply walking through the market, these folks selling their wares generally leave you alone if you express no interest. If you stop to admire their Sistine Chapel painted on a plate, all bets are off. Once you acknowledge their existence you are a willing participant in the ballet of bargaining that characterizes this type of transaction. I bought both my girls scarves from a sweet older lady who didn’t berate me but explained in sensible rationale why her scarves were 2 Euros higher than her next door neighbor. Whether it was true or not was left to the gods, but I believed her and paid the extra. My daughter’s loved them so I felt the transaction was a success and relatively painless.
It is quite sobering to walk through a small enclave and realize people had been living there, in the same houses, for 500 years before the United States was even a glimmer in Jefferson’s eyes. We in the West have such a short term perspective. I distinctly remember walking through colonial Williamsburg a couple of summers ago and thinking how ancient and primitive the development was, yet walking the streets of Florence and Rome simple exaggerated the absurdity of that. 300 years is but a nap for most European cities and old is measured in millennia rather than decades. There were paintings in the world famous Uffizi Gallery in Florence that were older than Columbus’ fateful voyage to an aptly named New World. Walking through the ancient Roman Forum commanded both awe and respect for not only the ancient’s creativity and ingenuity, but also their love of aesthetics. These were amazing people and it saddens me that for years, during the Dark Ages, they were forgotten and left to crumble on the heap of history. I wonder if there had been a direct line of development from the Roman era to today, delving straight into the Renaissance and not wasting a few centuries in betwixt, would we be in a place of higher appreciation for art, philosophy and wisdom, as opposed to who the next Kardashian will marry?
That musing I will leave for another day.
