Mike has been in Italy for the past 10 days
Mike sees remnants of Italy's Communist tradition in the fact that no matter how far away something is, your Italian friends tell you it takes 'fai, 10 minutes' to get there.
Mike is reading a book about the history of the mafia, and reading it in Naples feels like flipping through The Satanic Verses in Damascus.
Mike can achieve sleepfulness in the following places: A sloping lawn next to a car park, a welcome mat-sized rectangle on the floor of a train and the backseat of a Fiat. Mike was not aware of this prior to last week.
Mike feels guilty about giving his laundry to his Italian friend's grandmother, who not only washed all of his underwear by hand, but ironed all non-underwear items.
Mike: 'Nona, that's really not necessary.'
Nona: 'I do what I want!'
Are there any stereotypes about Italians that aren't true? The trains are late, the people do most of their communicating with pinched-finger gestures, everyone lives with their parents and, yes, you do want to move there about 10 minutes after your plane lands.
Mike is amazed he's gone five bullet points without mentioning the food.
Mike took a shower with his straight friend. The reasons for this are vast and tedious, but the look of nano-terror on Straight Friend's face as he heard the phrase 'dude, we're gonna have to do this together' was worth the preceding discomfort.
Excerpt from Mike's awesome mafia-history book: "Following a famous mafia murder in 1903, the New York Herald proclaimed in alarm, 'The Boot unloads its criminals upon the United States. Statistics prove that the scum of southern Europe is dumped at the nation's door in rapacious, conscienceless, lawbreaking hordes.'"
Mike thinks we can all agree that 'statistics prove' is the filet of the above quote.
Mike thinks Turin is feloniously underrated as a weekend destination.
Mike is beginning to doubt the rigorousness of his preacher's-kid upbringing. Italians spent last weekend celebrating 'Ferragosto', or the ascension of Extra Virgin Mary into heaven. Mike was not aware that she did that, or that Italians celebrated it.
During the Ferragosto party, Mike saw his first fistfight since high school. Two, actually. He is reassured that his Fight or Flight instinct still consists of finding a good spectator-spot from which to gawk and sip something alcoholic.
