Today I saw some real Italian. the only drag about starting to speak Italian all the time is that you stop becoming a tourist to the people and you start becoming a regular person. so I'm in this restaurant where I always go for breakfast because they will actually make me breakfast which is a miracle here—they don't actually like doing it and look at me like I am crazy for wanting anything but espresso and bread. And I go in and grab this sugar thing off the counter and this young guy working there gives me this sopranos like ‘eeehhh what the fuck?!’ but in Italian, and I'm like taken aback. And then he throws a couple of sugar packs to me. I'm like fuck I'm getting too comfortable here. They think I'm one of them. and then the father sees this and starts screaming at the guy and hitting him up side his  head. And they are in this big shouting match over how he acted. ‘o.k. enough!!!’ “no its not enough. Stop treating the customers like that!!!! what's wrong with you. you're stupid. Why are you so rude?!!!’ ‘o.k. enough!’ I swear to God it was just like being back at home when I was a little kid with my whole family screaming at each other. I was like o.k. now I'm seeing some real Italian shit. Cause they are doing this right in the middle of their restaurant in front of all the customers. Classic.

I will say this. The books I have been reading spend a lot of time talking about how split up Italy is and has always been. That is why it has never achieved the kind of unity and power that other countries have. the regions are so different and are happy to stay that way. they have been fighting over this for fifteen hundred years. seriously. There are two different factions in the country. One set says that they should all unite and be one country and be governed by one government so to speak, and the other set says that they should be separate and not even be a country but a bunch of little city-states. Much blood has shed over this debate. They have over 1500 different dialects still being spoken, each of them almost entirely different from the other. Italian as it is now spoken, which is Toscana Italian, has only been the official language for 100 years. and still when you leave Tuscany, you find a lot of towns don't speak it. They say that Florentines are stuck up and aloof. I would agree. You do not feel the heart of the Florentine. It is hard. It is nothing like Latin America say where they open the door to their own house and say come on in, eat our food, watch our TV, lets hang out and dance. Here it is more like o.k. fine you're here, what do you want? 

I think that because they are so bombarded by tourists all the time that they have this big block up to their persons. You do see the way they are treated themselves as Florentines by all the tourists. It really is like living in Disney world. People just walk into a store or restaurant and start talking in English as if it is Disney world, can we get some water please. very rude and the waiter or whoever doesn’t even know what they are talking about. And you see all these people with these maps everywhere just walking around as if this whole town is not really a place where people live but more of just a stop on someone's vacation. so I can certainly understand the feeling they have. after all people really do live here. 350,000 of them. 

Ps--there are no blacks here. Maybe in other cities but not in Florence. Very few. And the only time you see them is when they are on the street peddling some merchandise. It is not like the states at all where they have achieved like super-human status. In America the black people define our pop culture at this point. And the rest of us go along. I am curious to see other parts of other Italy and Europe to see what the brother scene is like there.

By the way, this bastard at the restaurant this morning way over charges me for my breakfast just because his father yelled at him. I just went to pick up my dry cleaning. And they are closed. It is fucking Saturday for God sakes! I leave tomorrow for a week and I will have no shirts to take with me. I hate this fucking place. There is no order here. our teacher constantly complains that Italy is portrayed as disorganized, happy go lucky clowns in the press and the TV and cinema, and he hates it. well, then get some order or some rules people and stick to them. it is very strange, on the one hand they are the epitome of modernity. World leaders in style and design, and on the other hand it is like we are still living in the fifteen hundreds here. it just befuddles the mind.