Italian word of the week: _mimetizzazione_ – camouflage

I felt something over here I have never felt before: the urge to buy a pair of camo pants. You heard me — camouflage, which has been the ultimate fashion faux pas my entire life up until this point. It’s apparently really big over here, and I had an internal struggle the other night about buying them because they were aesthetically pleasing. But I was also morally opposed wearing anything with camo on it for most of my life, let alone camo pants.

But when in Italy, you must do as the Italians do.

Another thing many Italians do that Americans don’t as much is eat an entire pizza in one sitting. I’m not talking about the entire Gumby’s pizza that you ate after hitting up Harpo’s last Friday night after you got home and were a little less than sober. I’m talking about going out for a fancy dinner, sitting down and eating an entire pizza with a glass of wine on a date with a well-dressed Italian partner. Somehow, everyone remains supremely skinny and fabulously dressed. I am convinced these Italians are magical unicorns or another extremely rare breed.

The evidence to prove this: my mini trip up to Lake Como on Sunday. The international group, Erasmus Student Network, sponsored this trip. We got to go to Como, the place where George Clooney and many other rich and famous have their private villas. We went on the super touristy boat ride around the lake, walked around the center of the city and then went up the mountain to get a really great view of the lake with Swiss Alps in the background.

To get up to this lighthouse viewpoint we had to first take the Funicolare, a short little railway, and then hike the rest of the way up on a cobblestone path. If you read my last column, you’d know I am not the best at packing. Therefore, I was wearing boots that were, well, better suited for stylish walks to and from class and on the metro rather than long hikes up a vertical mountain.

It’s safe to say that some of the others from the group and I were near passing out when we finally made it to the top. Yet there the magical unicorn creature-humans were perched without a hint of exhaustion. These Italians can eat entire pizzas for lunch, gelato for midday snack and smoke several times a day. And yet, they still made it up the hill in half the time I did, IN HEELS.

 I am determined to catch one of them transitioning into a superhero or something when they think I’m not looking.

One of my personal favorite trends is what a friend and I dubbed “The Italian Face”. There were a bunch of party pics on a screen at this massive club we went to called Alcatraz, and maybe 1/15 people were smiling in the pictures. The rest had that signature model half-open mouth look going on, and they all executed it perfectly. Even the Italian babies at Lake Como were doing “The Italian Face” in pictures.

Not all of the Italian trends and customs I’ve experienced are magical, however. The whole closing-everything-down-at-lunch thing is somewhat inconvenient when the store that sells shoes for €10 – $13.00 in the U.S. — isn’t opening back up until after your train leaves.

I also caught a woman trying to pick-pocket a teenage boy on the train standing next to me. I couldn’t even say anything as she reached her hand out toward his pocket. My self-defense lessons did teach me to take a mental picture of her face to be able to describe her if need be. She saw me staring her down and stopped.

As this was my first witness to a potential pick-pocket, I was surprised at how wealthy and old this woman looked. Studying abroad really shows you that people are usually not what they appear to be. Sometimes you might even find a magical unicorn attempting to pick-pocket you.