From Luzern we drove through the 16-kilometer Gotthard tunnel at a steady 80kmh and out the other side where something extraordinary happens: no longer are you in German-speaking Switzerland, now everything is in Italian.
We stopped for a brief look at the town of Bellinzona, which is still well into Switzerland but you have to keep kicking yourself to remind yourself that you are not in Italy. Italian is spoken, so far as we could tell, by everyone, the restaurants look Italian; a famously-efficient red and yellow Swiss post van passes, but the driver is wearing dark glasses, is in need of a shave, and is smoking a cigarette – most disconcerting to one’s image of the archetypal Swiss. The driver of the famously efficient red and yellow Swiss Post Bus that waits outside the main railway station is standing at the open door of his bus, flashing his elaborate and colourful designer watch on his wrist while eating a biscuit. No, kick yourself again, this is Switzerland, unbelievable, but it is Switzerland.
A shortish journey today so we stopped again, still in Switzerland, for our lunch, at Lugano, which like Bellinzona looks and feels exactly like Italy. A prosperous-looking town, men in dark suits and ties were walking on the promenade of the lake, speaking Italian. Bankers or financiers.
Anyone who believes that the landscape makes the people needs to visit the Ticino region of Switzerland. It’s the people what make the landscape, not the other way round, Harry.
And Then Into Italy.
With the increased border controls between Switzerland and EU countries, voted for by the Swiss people, or some of them at least, the Italian border guards find it appropriate to place a check on the cars passing through from Switzerland into their country. This check mainly seems to consist of the officials standing about smoking a cigarette and believing they look hard and mean and cool, while the drivers of the cars that they have held in a queue that makes its way slowly through the filter, think, oh no! Here we are again, it’sn Italy!
I don’t know what it is; perhaps it is just the only true religion: the perversity of life, that means that whenever someone thinks they look hard, or mean, or cool, everyone who looks at them thinks they look flabby, stupid and ridiculous.
This observation, that those who think they look cool look instead to everyone who observes them from without as everything but, seems intrinsically basic to human life; yet so far as I can ascertain there has been no academic study as to the science of this, which seems surprising, seeing how fundamental it is. The condition seems especially to afflict Italians, who have the concept of la bella figura, a difficult phrase to translate precisely into English, the best I can come up with, that I think is pretty close to accurate, is: ‘ you dunnarf look a tit’.
But we put up with it. Driving in Italy is stressful because Italian men are brought up by their mothers to believe that they are big boys, big little piggies, and so feel the need to treat the motorway as a racetrack. Mostly I stay well clear of this and let them exercise their egos as they see fit, but occasionally I need to make use of the power of my motor car, which does not look much but has a reasonable gun about it, mainly I use this power to leave potential trouble behind; quite often this pending trouble can be attributed to someone who is texting and either separately or simultaneously reading the newspaper while driving. Piggies can do that quite invincibly, for they are their mother’s favourite little piggy and have the dark glasses to prove it. Periodically I get the car reaching a bit over 100mph to avoid what could be a dangerous situation.
Italian women are not brought up to be invincible piggies like their menfolk, though they are no better on the motorways, for an Italian woman might have read somewhere that paying attention to the road is important, but that must always and as a matter of common knowledge take second place to the infinitely more important concern of texting or talking on the mobile to her friends, or perhaps more accurately, to her mother.
Cruise control, in Italy, is nearly always impossible to use. No sooner have you switched it on than you have to switch it off again because of someone slowing down unpredictably, trying to race you to overtake, or you catch them up when they are travelling in the middle lane and you are in il filo di vergogna – the lane of shame, known in most other countries of Europe rather prosaically as ‘the inside lane’. Only in the hours between about 1pm and 2.30 can I make a little use of cruise control, while many of the piggies are at their trough and their womenfolk talking to their friends on their telefonino at the same time, mouthful by mouthful, as eating their lunch.
Hilary does find it stressful being a car passenger in Italy at the best of times. Perhaps for someone with Alzheimer’s, where unpredictable situations are best avoided, Italy is not the best country to travel in a car in.
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