Going to the supermarket early in Italy? Don’t
There are some things you only have to do wrong once. One of those things, as our colleague Minne from Italiamo discovered, is going to the supermarket early in Italy as a Dutch person. It’s practically a full-time job. And I can well imagine you don’t feel like working while you’re on holiday, so skip that early shift.
The lives of old people in Italy—but really, extremely old people—seem pretty easygoing to me. The nursing-home culture hasn’t really caught on in Italy, with all the consequences that entails. Help and care come from children, grandchildren or neighbours. On my street, I regularly see a woman lower a basket from her window on a rope, which various people then put her groceries into.
The old people of Italy
What I like seeing is that old people are often treated with respect and gentleness by bus drivers, coffee-bar staff or hairdressers. You could almost call it a kind of immunity. Like slow-moving comets, they walk through the streets and rarely get out of anyone’s way. Italians seem completely fine with that.
The elderly shift at the Italian supermarket
What I didn’t know until recently was that the Italian supermarket has an extremely elderly shift. I discovered this when I once again made a futile attempt to live a more disciplined life and got up early at the weekend. When I entered the supermarket, I saw nothing but grey wrinkles, walking frames and support stockings. And everyone shuffled slowly but undisturbed through the aisles. If there had been music playing, it could easily have been a shuffle-dance competition.
That calm was briefly interrupted when a tiny woman reached for a tin of fagioli but, of course, couldn’t get anywhere near it. She looked at me as though I were Mount Everest in human form—I was almost startled—and pointed upwards with her wrinkled hand. She asked if I could help her for a moment. When I put the tin in her trolley, I heard a sort of cry from the other side of the aisle.
Come later next time
Another tiny lady was looking at me with a broad grin and pointing to a packet of dried porcini, also out of her reach. After I helped her too, little old ladies started coming at me from all directions, all pointing. I mean it—like wasps on apple pie. I was under siege. So an hour and a half later I reached the checkout, and the man said with a laugh, ‘Hard work—come later next time.’
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Source: Italiamo
