It's The Simple Life

Well I read a long post on a Facebook friends blog today which is the kind of stuff that most people love to read about life in Italy. It's all about how a person can give up the fast paced life in the US and move to Italy a country where people live a much simpler, back to real values kind of life style. I have to say that from my point of view this is really a crock. What it is really about is giving up the lifestyle that most people around the world aspire to and living like a poor person. Being poor is not necessarily a bad thing if one has at least the basics and a good attitude about it. That is if one can accept the simpler things in life and be happy then it's fine.

But I can assure you that most Italians would happily give up the wonders of the simple life if they could afford it. What is it that makes someone think the people of Italy are any different from others in the world. Italy does offer a lot of things that make living simply easier but you don't have to move here to give up a faced paced life style. Just buy yourself a little place in the foothills of Arizona or some such place and raise chickens and goats tell your heart is content.

I am in the north of Italy so maybe I see things differently. People here work hard some at more than one job just to survive. They live in small apartments, very small by US standards and to me their lives don't seem so different from the lives of people I know in the US. Except that they do have more days off for holidays and vacations and they often have parents available to take care of young kids while they work. Most families have at least one car, well in fact if they both work they generally have two. They don't go shopping every day for fresh vegetables, they shop at the super market once a week. They shop in the malls, they buy wide screen tvs and spend too much on high priced clothing - sound familiar. I could go on.

Don't get me wrong, Italy is a beautiful country and I like living here. But all this hype I read about the beautiful and simple life style in Italy just tends to rub me the wrong way.