Braving the Italian Winter
17:06 |
| Bristol, 2013 |
It is with a heavy heart that I have admitted that my beach-going days in Italy are over for the foreseeable future. This is mainly because the temperature has well and truly dropped over the past month or so as winter begins to gradually unravel itself over northern Italy, bringing us wind, hail and some of the most impressive thunderstorms I've experienced in Europe. If anyone I knew was seriously considering going outside in a swimming costume in this weather, I would let them. They probably aren't contributing much to the gene pool.
I had always suspected that I do not have a normal perception of temperature and living abroad has confirmed this. Dressing for the weather is a challenge for me. Sometimes this is because I copy other people and then it turns out other people can't handle the same level of cold as I can. In this situation, I generally find myself sweating in my coat, vest, scarf and hat because I was foolish enough to follow the herd. At other times this is partly down to stupidity – for example, when I went to visit a friend in Geneva. For some reason, I didn't take the weather into consideration, despite the fact that I was going north on the train for four hours and the last time I did this I was going from Stevenage to Edinburgh and I took several jumpers (it was mid-June). I only realised that I may have made a terrible mistake when the train pulled up in Domodossola, an Alpine town next to the border, and there was snow on the ground. Bugger. I had only brought with me the standard warm clothes I had been wearing in Pavia – I hadn't accounted for snow. The rest of the journey was spent desperately hoping that the snow would be gone by the time the train reached Geneva. It was, but it had been replaced by wind so fierce it made my ears sting and I wished I'd brought a hat.
I've never been one to feel the cold in any significant way. This is a good thing in the UK, which is not exactly famed for its tropical climate, but can be slightly problematic when holidaying in southern Europe as my body can't cope with what it deems excessive heat and likes to respond to the temperature creeping above 30°C by making me ill, sometimes to the point of incapacitation. I spent most of our two-week family holiday in Andalusia lying by the pool drinking my own body weight in water while my family explored Spain because I was genuinely incapable of doing anything else for fear of vomiting profusely and passing out. This meant that, at first, I wasn't too surprised at the constant, "Aren't you cold?" quizzing I received every time I ventured out without a ski jacket on. Besides, when I arrived in Pavia in early September, the weather was glorious.
When it came to the temperature, it soon became apparent to me and those around me that my perception of warmth was very much "other". This was mostly put down to my nationality. On occasion, I barely have time to react to the demands of, "Aren't you cold?" before I hear the aloud realisation of, "Ahhh, but you're from the UK!" I'm used to the semi-Arctic conditions of England; Italian winter must feel like summer for me! This confuses me. I could understand this conclusion being drawn by someone from Spain, Portugal or Greece but, most of the time, I was getting it from fellow northern Europeans. I have been to Germany and Belgium and I can easily locate the Netherlands on a map and I am absolutely convinced that Britain is no colder than any of these countries. I would even be willing to bet that we get less snow than they do, at least in the south of England where I spend 95% of my time. For some reason British weather has a reputation for being terrible when it is really only moderately disappointing. Yes, we don't always have a summer and yes, there is a great deal of rain in certain parts of the country, but some of my continental friends seem to be labouring under the delusion that I live in a couple of miles south of the Arctic Circle. Appropriate adjectives to describe British weather would be rainy, dreary, overcast, cloudy and unpleasantly humid during the summer months. Cold, in my eyes, is more appropriate for somewhere like Norway.
I started wearing long trousers, tights and jackets earlier than I felt comfortable with because I thought it would stop the constant side-eyeing I received when I went out in shorts. Call me desperate to fit in; you'd be right. Don't judge me – I moved to another country on my own. Unfortunately, my efforts proved fruitless as, every time I took my jacket off after becoming too hot while wearing it, people still asked me if I was cold. I realise this comes from a place of kindness but, quite frankly, I resent the assumption that I am some kind of simpleton who carries warm clothes around but doesn't think to put them on when I get chilly. No doubt my friends believe that I may one day die in a snow storm, collapsing onto the freezing ground under the weight of carrying my coat, scarf and hat around while lamenting, "I'm so cold and my coat is so heavy!"
But things change and December is here now. The temperature has dropped to zero during some nights; in other words, it is now objectively cold in northern Italy. I have yet to meet anyone who has claimed not to feel cold at night-time now and if I did I would recommend that they seek medical attention as they may well have a glandular disorder. Unfortunately, I am no longer able to complain about the cold without being mocked. This is because I may have mocked others for complaining that it was cold during September-October time. Well, mocked may be a little strong, but the word "wimp" was definitely thrown around a little too carelessly. Now this has come back to bite me. I am not allowed to complain about the cold when it is actually cold because I didn't complain about it when it wasn't cold. I'm almost as bitter as the winter.
No one prepares for the winter quite like the Italians. I have grown accustomed to seeing puffa jackets on every other person in the street because the Italians put them on religiously on October 1st and don't remove them until mid-April. Various other layers of clothing are added as the temperature drops until half of the people on the street resemble Randy from the festive film A Christmas Story. I falsely believed that there was a childhood obesity crisis gripping northern Italy until I worked out that what I thought was fat was actually a cocoon of waterproofs and fleeces, which they will eventually shed when they grow into overprotective parents and repeat the ritual with their own offspring. Italians even dress their dogs for the winter. I've reached a point in my life at which a dachshund wearing trousers doesn't invoke so much as a second glance.
No one bitches about the winter quite like the rest of Europe, either. If you can make out facial expressions through their swathes of clothing you can see that the Italians are grinning and bearing it, rarely making any comment about the weather unless someone else brings it up first. We foreigners, not so much. Most of my Erasmus compatriots hail from northern Europe, so it's still a bit warmer here than it is in most of our homelands, but we're still not happy. In spite of logic and experience, I think we all managed to convince ourselves that winter isn't really a thing in Italy and we are not happy about being proven wrong. "It's so cold! The weather here is so dreadful!" we cry, forgetting that it's probably five degrees colder and raining twice as hard in our own cities. After the glorious weather of September, we feel short-changed. We feel that we didn't sign up for this, despite the fact that we clearly did by choosing to spend the winter semester in Italy rather than the summer.
Decrying the weather has always been a typical British past-time but it turns out it's gaining popularity as a hobby in other countries as well. I enjoy this. Some people hate small-talk but I am not one of them. Stepping out of the classroom into the cold has almost become a bonding ritual where we can compare whose teeth are chattering the loudest and compliment each other's scarves. Ultimately, it's a subject that requires little thought and is relevant to all of our lives. So we bitch on, boats against what feels like a miniature hurricane, borne back ceaselessly into hapless passers-by.
1 comments
Excellent read! Keep up the good work!
ReplyDelete- A secret admirer