eurobrat wrote:You fail to tell everyone those are people who cultivated relationships that took 2,4,5 years to when you're able to invite them over. You can't just rush things and make friendships as easily as other countries.
Well, not really, no. Of course some friendships grow naturally more solid when you spend a lot of your formative years with the same boy and girls. You probably don't know this, but the Italian school system has fixed classrooms and rotating teachers. This means that, basically since you're 5 or 6, you have a chance to spend half of your weekday with the same group of 25/30 peers. We only have primary (5 years), junior high (3 years) and high (4 or 5 years) school, so we spend 13 years with about 80 people.
That perhaps explains why we don't see being "tribal" and cliquish as a big problem. Just saying... Things aren't that black and white anyway, as there is always the chance to befriend kids from other class, the cute girl 2 years younger, friends from a rock band or a sports club, etc. But I guess you get it.
What I was referring to was the kinds of relationships and friendships that blossom out of the necessity to create and maintain a circle of friends, or at least trusted and fun people, in large cities where one moves to get a job and work. Milan is such a city, and so is Rome, Bologna and to a lesser extent Naples, Genova, etc.
Nobody has 2, 4 5 years to befriend somebody in those environments. One goes out with work colleagues, acquaintances from courses and social events, or even random people met in bars. You seemed to cave in quite a lot and never had A (your flatmate) as a right wingman. That did quite a bit of damage. That's why I recommended you to meet my cousin. It would have been one reference point to meet more people and finally stop complaining.
Anyway, what's done is done.
eurobrat wrote:Yea but I got my residency and now have a German bank account without giving them my US SS number to have to "report" my earnings here. Something I couldn't accomplish in renting 3 flats in Italy in a year.
And those numbers are from my data and others, it's a fact that Milan and Rome are 50%+ more expensive than Berlin. So I get 50% more for my money and I can actually feel and see that here.
That you didn't (or couldn't be given) a residency was something between you and your flatmate. Why do you want to make that representative of an entire culture? Had you gone to an estate agency you would have had a regular contract and would have had to explain a lot less to your bank manager. As for earnings reporting, isn't that a bilateral agreement between the US and a lot of other countries? Is it just Italy's fault?
LOL what are "your data"? Have you actually lived in Milan or Rome, I mean not eating a pizza in front of the Duomo (which might be a nice experience, but costly and hopefully one-off)? I may well agree that Berlin is cheaper and easier to live in, which is why it has become popular with young un-sophisticated professionals from all over Europe, but 50% cheaper? Hmm, sounds really exaggerated.
eurobrat wrote:We have real Italians here making the pizzas, something that is becoming rare in Italy. And yes they taste the same if not better without the added bureaucracy.
No shit, we have tons of them in London, too. The migrant pizzaman has been an Italian classic for two centuries
Are you being racist towards the coptic Egyptians who bake the best pizzas in Milan? Don't you know that
they (not us) invented that particular type of dough? Same like waxing lyrical about Italian espresso until you taste a Turkish coffee in a second-tier city market in Turkey and it's all a journey back in time, where it all started.
eurobrat wrote:Had one person just invited me out with them and I saw the light, maybe my opinion would be different. But seeing as all I could get was Albanians and other immigrants my opinion stands firm. This is why I like seeing Italians, Spanish and French here, they're a fish out of water without their social cliques, language and family.
People
did invite you, but you were too busy with work or gym, or they were too old, or too trashy, or too uneducated, or too Albanian. You had more excuses in your pocket than the average American has credit cards in their wallets. It feels almost cruel to keep bashing you on this..
Let's say you never were in the mood, and unable to catch opportunities that are now much more visible in Berlin.
eurobrat wrote:Yea I don't know about this, culture and people are different everywhere in Europe. This isn't middle America.
You're an American, that's why you see things this way. As an European, you would notice the commonalities much more than the differences, albeit present. It will be many years before you get bored of Europe, like it took me 15 years to start feeling London and the UK a little worn out.
eurobrat wrote:I'm not sure who can live there except those that grow up there and don't know how much better things are outside of the gate.
You can stay in Italy by choice or force, or anything in between. There is some very subtle wisdom in those who decide to stay. Perhaps they feel the world outside isn't that inviting as it might appear. I surely feel like they're right, after 15 years here. Sure, I am making more money, but the price I had to pay was to give up a lot of who I was and - most importantly - wanted to continue to be.
eurobrat wrote:He (my flatmate) hardly even went out himself, and then when he did go out to Milan he never invited me and came up with excuses like "Oh we would be speaking Italian the entire time and I don't want them to bore you". So instead I just sat in my room festering, being negative and cultivating hate until I just popped and had to go to another place where I felt more welcoming and less burdensome on people.
And plus he wants to leave Italy too, and he's even dating a non-italian girl. I talked to him last week and he was telling me a scenario where at times he feels invisible to the locals.
Maybe I shouldn't say this here, but I did ask him about this detail - why he never asked you to join him when he was out and about with his friends. His answer did not surprise me to the slightest: you were way too negative and pessimist and depressed, and didn't want any of that to rub off on him. Considering everything, I guess he could have been kinder and actually tried to change those moods of yours. On another side though, I can't say he saw wrong - at some point all the poison, the hate, the frustration started to really affect my day. That's why I had to go to the extreme length of removing you on FB and Skype...couldn't stand you and your negativity.