What I've learned from Italy: Guest Post!

Spaghetti. It's that wriggly, delicious pasta that's synonymous with the comforting culture of Italy; It also seems to be the key design element in Italy’s traffic systems.

I am Daniel, your guest blogger! And I’ve just returned from an awesome European adventure. I learned many new things in my trip to Italy and here I'll be dropping a few of my lessons as experienced throughout my own journey in the North of the boot.

• All your pizza or bruschetta are belong to you. Italians don’t share pizza. You slice it into pieces to make it easier for you to eat, not to share. Go away.

• Sometimes, Italians eat ice-cream as a meal. Sometimes, they eat it after their actual meal. Doesn’t matter, had ice-cream.

• Roundabouts are like octopi. They don’t have standard exits. Exiting is like playing roulette with your car. Although, not large they’re still very confusing to people from distant lands.

• Speed limits (and also indicators) are just suggestions. In Italy, what they call normal at 170km/h is what Australians call 6 demerit points, suspension of license and full car impoundment.

• Different police sectors care only about their own sector. Eg: Italian finance police on the street: “Oh what’s that? A Giulietta going 100km over the speed limit? None of our business as long as they pay their taxes."

• Running anything but a Vespa would be expensive. The last petrol station I saw was around 1.77 Euro/L.

• Castles, churches and ruins are everywhere. Modern Italians are all literally neighbouring historical sites... And tourists *cough cough*!

• There is a different accent or dialect every 5 metres. Not really. But pretty close to that.

"Are they your people? From the North?”
“No! They’re from Bologna. Listen to that accent!”

“Isn’t that sorta North?”
“They'd like to think so but they're not even close to Winterfell”

• You don’t leave Italy the same weight you arrived with. I’m not talking about your suitcase either. The food is too good. If you have family or friends there who cook, you’re not going anywhere without two full stomachs and indigestion.

Pro tip: Don’t tell them how hungry you are out of 10. It’s a trap! They’ll feed you your own weight in food, multiplied by the number you answered. And then take you to ice-cream.