Day 17 - Watching the Italians

Today I learnt two things about the Italians, the first happened in Milan Station the second in the city of Turin (Torino to the Italians). As we got off the train in Milan station we had some time to kill so Mel decided to use the local rest room. As i waited outside the loos I watched two men fixing the device that stands in the way of the paying customer, till you give it a euro and its glass doors separate and allow you to enter. As I watched a mum, with 2 small children, rushed towards the gates to enter the loo and as they went to enter one of the glass doors simply exploded showering glass all over the loo entrance and one of the poor children. Furious at what had happened, and after checking the child was OK, the mother made the child drop his pants on the side of the platform and piss up the side of the wall, while a cleaner looked on completely confused by what he was seeing. She turned and yelled at the cleaner who just put his hands up in a way to say "hey I got nothing to do with this" and walked off, in which the woman grabbed her children and followed the cleaner down the platform continuing to shout at him.

The second thing happened in the centre of Turin. We had appeared to have arrived in Turin on an evening where everything seemed to be happening. In one of the squares stools had been set-up featuring themes along the lines of science, what it looked like was a massive science fair which I thought was a random but also pretty cool thing to have in a main square at 9 o clock at night. What really impressed me was the amount of people in family groups and even small groups of teenagers taking part and having fun! A bit further on in a different square a kind of food and drink event was being held, ramped full of Italians laughing, chatting and being pretty merry. From this day I learnt a lot about this race of people, they are proud, good people, who connect and get on well with each other but take no shit from anyone!