Italians and road work

Italians are infuriating. Especially when it comes to fixing their extremely poorly designed highway directly in front of the Caffè degli amici. This morning, around 8:00am when everyone is trying to drive to work, or in our case, walk to breakfast/class, they decided to repave the entire street. I don't know much about this, but I would assume that in America, this sort of work would be done at a time at which it wouldn't interfere with most people's lives. Possibly around 4 in the morning, or late at night. But I guess Italians only work during normal weekday hours. Fine, I'll accept that. Perhaps they might have considered doing this paving at or around 3pm, when the caffè is closed, and when everyone in this entire country is taking their post-lunch naps, when people are safely at their jobs, and when there is almost no one on the road. No, that would be too logical for Italians. They decide to pick the most inconvenient time to rip up the current street, put down new tar, and flatten it all in front of a group of student eating at the caffè immediately in front of them. 

The fumes were strong enough to kill. The whole process seemed positively unsafe, as their machines were getting uncomfortably close to the caffè. The tar was hot, the machines were everywhere, and people kept trying to cross the street but couldn't. Did I mention there are also no sidewalks? This would have been a lawsuit waiting to happen in America. In Italy, I suppose it was just a Tuesday morning. As one of the other students said, Italy is a first-world country with third-world problems. Possibly because of their corrupt government leaders, or the overall laziness which may be due in part to the intense heat. Those slight annoyances from France, such as the time it takes to complete very simple tasks (see my post about opening a French bank account), are exponentially worse here, and we're not even seeing half of it since we're here within the context of an American university that is doing everything for us. On the one hand, it's good for us to get out of the stressed mindset that everything has to be done immediately; on the other, we still need to turn in our work on time, whether or not the Italians have fixed the Internet. All in all, a six week program in Italy is a nice vacation, but actually studying here would probably be somewhat of a hindrance to productivity.