Italy vs. England: The Beach
19:26
I have always had a complicated relationship with the beach. My
parents will often wearily recount the many times that I have demanded we visit
the beach on family holidays, and might even bring out the photographs of ten-year-old me sitting on a beach in Southwold wearing a fleece. I am British.
The weather will not deter me from enjoying the sea air, or at least pretending
to. At the same time, I have had enough unfortunate experiences on beaches that
I have learnt to be somewhat wary of them, ranging from sunburn so bad that I
was tempted to schedule an appointment with a skin cancer specialist to waiting
in the French equivalent of A&E while my sister had sand surgically
extracted from her cornea. I like the beach. I’m not sure the beach likes me.
When I arrived in Pavia the temperature was inching towards the early
thirties and the sun was so strong that I managed to develop an impressive tan line
where my shorts were in a matter of days. Having been told that the weather
would soon progress into rain and mist, my new Erasmus friends and I were
determined to get to the beach at least once before the fog came rolling in.
While Pavia isn’t very near the coast, the train services from Lombardy to
Liguria are very good and it’s possible to get to a beach in around two hours, so
we headed down to the train station to buy tickets to Celle, a beach not far
from Genoa that we had been told was extremely pleasant. To our dismay, the
9:35 train was already fully booked and the only remaining cheap train departed
at 7:30. I live over half an hour away from the train station, so I was required
to get up at a time that I generally refer to as “arse o’clock”. As I stood at
the bus stop, slowly blinking in the newly-risen sun with eyes that had only
managed about 5 hours of sleep, I considered all the traumatic beach incidents
of my past. Knowing my luck, they would all happen again that day.
At the time of writing this, I have been to the beach twice since
arriving on my year abroad, and I can happily confirm that no subsequent
medical attention has been necessary (aside from a good dose of caffeine to
treat the early starts – we had to get up early the second time as well). As well as having a thoroughly enjoyable time lying around in the sun with my new friends, I have spent my time on the Italian seaside observing quite how different it is to the beaches I spent my childhood on in Cornwall, Norfolk and, on one regrettable family holiday, Northumberland.
One of the major differences that I have noticed between here and my
homeland is the sheer expense of going to a beach in Italy. I haven’t been to a
beach in the UK for a long time (damn you, British summer), but most of my
memories have involved turning up and setting yourself down wherever you can find
space between other tourists and their shrieking children. In Italy this is not
the case. Every imaginable piece of seaside is lined with bars and restaurants
and it soon became apparent that they are not just there to give you a wide
variety of lunch venues to choose from: they own sections of the beach. Each
section is bedecked with sun-loungers and umbrellas, all themed in colour so
you can tell who you’re supposed to pay. Not only do they charge an entrance
fee but they have so strategically placed the sun-loungers that it’s basically
impossible to just lay down a towel and start enjoying the sun; you have to
shell out for a place to sit as well. Students are not the group most famed for
their affluence so we moved from bar to bar trying to find the cheapest option
and eventually stumbled on the area known as the “spiaggia libera” – the free
beach. The first one was vile, a greyish, stony mess that looked especially
dirty and uncomfortable next to the perfect, golden sand of the 20-euro beaches
on either side of it. Unwilling to pay or sit on what effectively looked like a
child’s sandpit that hadn’t been cleaned out in three years, we soldiered on until
we found a much more appealing spiaggia libera at the other end of the coast.
Here there was no entrance fee, although you still had to pay for an umbrella
if you wanted any chance of escaping melanoma. It seems that if you want to go
to a beach in Italy, you have to save up for it.
I have also noticed a distinct difference in the way that people dress
at the beach. I don’t know if it’s the heat but in Italy there is a definite
trend towards wearing as small a swimsuit as possible. I’ve noticed in the UK
that it’s fairly unusual to see a woman over forty wearing a bikini. In Italy this
is not the case. I think I saw one woman not wearing a bikini on the beach in
Italy and she was wearing a wetsuit. There are people on the beach closer in
age to my grandmother than my mother wearing bikinis. Hopefully this is because
Italians haven’t bought into the idea that any woman who dares to succumb to
the irreversible, inescapable ageing process should wear long robes and a habit
for all eternity, lest the Daily Mail or other such hate-rags publish photos of
her with red circles superimposed around her wrinkles.
I should have predicted this before I arrived because I knew these
were more common on the continent, but I was definitely not ready for the high number of Speedos that can be found on Italian beaches. They’re not just for kids;
there are men of all ages wandering around in what are, effectively, waterproof
knickers. For someone who comes from a country that favours baggy shorts, it
was something of a distraction to see quite so many male genitals outlined in
tight, waterproof fabric, and not a pleasant one. I noticed one man sporting
something that reminded me simultaneously of both a thong and a loincloth. My
staunch belief that everybody has the right to do whatever they want to their
own body has never been more severely tested than at the moment I spotted it
riding up his perma-tanned arse crack. Fortunately, I was in the sea and capable
of swimming quickly away.
The best difference is definitely the weather. Gone are the days of
having to dig a huge hole in the sand to sit in because the wind was arctic and
we didn’t have a wind-breaker (I actually did this once and there are
pictures). Instead of sitting on my towel, shivering, I found myself having to
run every time I wanted to go in the sea because the sand was so hot it hurt my
feet. Regular dips in the sea were necessary to prevent overheating, a welcome
change from paddling in the English channel in which one often feels like one
is taking one’s chances with frostbite. The scenery in Liguria is absolutely
beautiful and made even more so by the presence of clear, blue sky and constant
sunshine. While I am aware that this weather is far from all-year-round, I can’t
pretend it doesn’t make me feel a little smug. Next time someone asks me why I chose
to study languages, in that tone of voice that clearly implies that they think
I’m insane and the only job I’ll ever get is being a teacher, I may just point
them towards the photographs I took of Camogli.
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