"In Italy we are one hundred years back"

We have encountered four pretty consistent challenges in our time in Italy. First, the road signs are terrible. In France (with the exception of our first day driving, in Paris), when you drive far enough in a straight line, you’ll eventually find a set of signs that tell you the direction of the next town few towns and the more significant distant ones or you will find a sign that says “Toutes Directions,” which lets you know if you continue driving straight you will find such signs. “Toutes” became an indispensible ally in our quest to get places.

Italy has some concept of Toutes – as we passed through about twenty kilometers of tunnels going from the French Alps down into the Piedmont, direction Turin, we occasionally saw a sign reading, “Tutti di directionze” which, in theory, should perform the same task – get the driver to a useful signpost that can help him or her make a decision. No such luck with the latter, though. The signage in Italy is terrible. One intersection will have clear signs getting us to where we want to go; one intersection later, we’re left to just figure it out. As a sign of Italy’s true randomness, we discover afterwards we guess correctly about half the time.

While in Alba, leaving our charming B&B to head to Barolo for some wine tasting, we drove around the ring road surrounding the town twice looking for a sign pointing to Barolo but seeing nothing. Driving through roundabout after roundabout looking at the signs pointing to every destination nearby but Barolo, we realize in a pique of clarity there’s a small chance that the one roundabout without any signs to other towns might be the one we need to get to our destination. Third time around, we choose the roundabout, only to see a sign for Barolo about 500 meters beyond the roundabout. This has been altogether too common an occurrence.

In Italy, many towns have signs with white bulls eyes directing a driver to the city center. These signs are immensely helpful, when they actually work. Unfortunately, all too often the signs are only deployed at every other intersection, requiring a guess at any diverging road without a sign. Again, the 50% rule. We have tried to get into Verona twice now, and the inconsistent centro signs have foiled us both times, adding twenty or so minutes to our travel as we reverse and try again. And, occasionally, again.

Our second challenge has less to do specifically with Italy than it has to do with the inconsistencies of the European Union. When I picked up my car in Paris, the Hertz attendant was very clear to tell me the car can only take Sans Plomb 95 or 98. Nothing else. As long as we were in France, our first 1700 kilometers were fine. Once we crossed into Italy, it all changed. No Sans Plomb 95 or 98 were available. No Sans Plomb at all. Whereas France had one choice for diesel, Italy has two. They have only one unleaded, and it bears nothing in common with the French term.

Banking is similar. In France, it was easy to find banks, particularly those of my bank, HSBC. Italy, true to an Economist article I read a year or so ago, is severely underbanked. Finding ATMs has been difficult and HSBC isn’t even allowed to engage in personal banking in Italy, even though they have branches in many small towns just across the border.

Our fourth problem has been in getting information. We eventually make it to the Verona tourist office, no thanks to Frommers, which lists it on the side of the Roman arena opposite from where it is – curse you Andrew Murphy, the terrible cartographer of our book. Tara goes up to the help desk and asks, as it says in our book to do, for information about the Veneto wine regions. She pulls out a map of Veneto and circles three areas near Verona, saying we can find wines from each of those areas. Tara asks, “so we just go there and its obvious where we can taste?” She says of course. We turn to walk out and I ask for the Frommers book. I take it back to the counter, flipping it to where it discusses the wine region and tasting and say, “in my book it says you should have a list of wineries that allow tasting. Do you have such a thing?” The person behind the desk looks at me for a moment then turns to go to a cabinet of neatly stacked pamphlets, maps, and brochures, digging through them to find us two items – a map specifically of Valpolicella and a second map, by Italian Touring, of all the wineries that allow public tasting. I thank them and, as Tara and I start walking to the door, we start giggling – of course we could get the information we needed, once we showed we knew exactly what we wanted them to give us.

And finally, the internet is almost impossible to find. We located one open wifi spot in all of downtown Alba. In France, Tara would have her iPod Touch or I would have my iPhone open searching for open connections if we needed to look something up; the list of networks would sometimes be a dozen long. Even if most or all of them were locked, France was using wifi. Not so in Italy. Walking through Milan performing the same technique, it was rare to find even one locked wifi connection. Thankfully our hotel had (flaky) access. And to get that, we needed to give them a copy of our passports; in return we received the network’s WEP key and a unique username and password that expired after ten hours of use.

After leaving the Verona tourist office and making two grocery stops where we could not locate an electric hot water kettle, we finally make it to an internet point, a small café about 2 km outside of Sirmione. We go in and ask if they have WiFi. No. Can I connect my computer to their internet connection? No. He walks us to the back to two computers that were likely manufactured before the dot com bust and asks if we want to use one or two of them. Just one. He asks us for identification – preferably a passport. Tara digs through her purse and gives him both of our passports. “With one computer, I only need one passport.” As Tara was loading up Firefox, I asked the barista why every time we sign onto the internet, everyone takes it so seriously, often asking for copies of our passports.

“What year is it, 2009? In Italy we are one hundred years back … before Christ. Do you know what I mean by this?”

All this pretty much sums up our Italy experience so far.