Italy is Italy: Chiuso per ferie (Coco Lezzone) -- Fave photos/Italy trip

I often worry that Italy is no longer Italy (like maybe they need the Italian equivalent of 'Keep Austin Weird' bumper stickers everywhere). 

This is for many reasons, including globalization of industries and companies, but tourism, especially from America, is also one culprit, even as it bolsters the Italian economy.

Signs Italy isn't Italy to me: English is everywhere in Italy, often for no good reason. In other words, what at first was used to accommodate tourists has now spread to content/slogans/informational texts that should be in Italian alone.

(As I blogged earlier this year, Paul Auster wrote of his father's visit to Holland where he was disappointed to find everyone spoke English and hence "were denied their Dutchness." Arguably, that's a different situation, of course, because the Dutch were/are using English to communicate with Anglophone people whereas English in Italy is often used, as I said, to communicate with Italians!)

There are also alarming messages everywhere that give you an idea of what some brazen tourist has already tried and what Italian authorities have had to now attempt to rein in (we were visiting one monument where we saw a sign on a high railing in English only: "No climbing.").

I also know the American schedule (and perhaps the English schedule or Japanese schedule) has made its mark. My old friends at the factory where I taught English ( and which is owned by Americans) don't seem to have the choice anymore whether they work to live or live to work.

Not to mention, it's odd to see foreign tourists zooming around on the same kind of scooter we bought Leo for his birthday or in modified golf carts. This wasn't available when I first came to study. Theoretically, it could be progress.

But I always look for a bit of an anthropological strain to my Italian studies -- I want to see how Italians do and say things naturally, without any outside influence.

And they don't zoom around Dante's city in a golf cart. 

But then I see signs like this one at the Florentine restaurant Coco Lezzone (famous for its appearance in the film "I Laureati") and I think, "Italy is still Italy." Chiuso per ferie = closed for vacation. In this case, for an entire month.

I saw similar signs on the doors of other establishments -- in some cases, they had been posted in late July and the businesses wouldn't reopen until sometime in September. That's an Italian-style vacation. Hard to imagine any business in America, save a purely seasonal operation or a family-run ag coop, closing for more than two weeks IF AT ALL. 

Maybe Italy is still Italy.

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