I am beginning my first unflattering series about Italians, about how I find the smashing majority of them to be absolute morons and poorly gifted creatures. Now sure enough, it’s easy to assume and have opinions, but the following is not only based upon theories, stories and research but on personal experiences that I’ve had with the intrepid representatives of this country while traveling to their homeland on business or pleasure, while engaging in casual or work conversations in airports, countries of Europe or North America. Sadly enough, I could only come to very unflattering conclusions towards these natural clowns as you will for sure agree following these ten episodes of facts and stories.

Two years ago I was flying a Jumbo jet from Toronto to Amsterdam, operated by KLM. All good so far, as I find KLM the best company one could travel with at very affordable prices, not to mention that by far they have the best looking flight attendants you can get in a transoceanic. Being seated exactly in the middle of the row, I was surrounded by a very eclectic crowd consisting of an Iranian flying home after living in England, US and then Canada, three Africans who’s origins I could not determine as their language sounded like a bunch of clacking with some lower tones every once in a while and - most unfortunately- three Italians probably returning from some spaghetti convention (it’s likely that people in Eastern Canada actually have those). Now usually I find common stupidity pretty entertaining, but this time the circumstances were not as fun as usual as we will see. For the first hour all they did was chat on extremely loud voices about the current standings in the almost finished soccer season in Serie A, seasoned with the word cazzo quite a bit and then it was not funny anymore. As it turns out, these particular Italians were not much into basic hygiene nor frequent use of deodorant, thing that became somewhat obvious after noticing their very wet dressy shirts and smelling the week old intoxicating flavors. To top it up add the greasy curly hair and the Italian-branded mullets. Also for the accuracy of my narration I must add that after a couple hours of enduring the stench, my African friends became quite restless, clacking on a higher voices and pointing at our travel companions where the Iranian guy next to me started to nudge his head, sigh and whisper politically incorrect words. Sure enough, this would not reflect any kind of specific Italian behavior unless we get some chicks into the picture, in this case the gorgeous Barbie-doll looking flight attendant who politely asked them if they would rather have beef or just a vegetarian meal for the complimentary supper; at this point she noticed that our three heroes find the language barrier an insurmountable challenge and she tried French, Dutch and then English again, this time clearly pointing at each box of food and almost spelling B-E-E-E-E-F, V-E-G-E-T-A-R-I-A-N, gestures that would have made Friday from Robinson Crusoe’s island understand and be able to react. Not these islanders though, but that did trigger a very specific Italian thought - “Oh, god, she is taking so much time to talk to us, she must know that we Italians are God’s gift to women”, so, instantly, using what he probably thought was a Casanova look and smile, the guy right next to the isle (and to me as well) started touching the back of her leg, right where the blue mini skirt ends, caressing it and still looking her in the eyes with the “Oh, yes, you like this, right mama?” kind of smile. Now, I don’t need to describe that her reaction was not quite as expected by our roman descendants but more like the opposite as she blushed, turned and ran. For the rest of the trip the only person that would approach the area and serve us has been the only male flight attendant I’ve ever seen on a KLM flight in my whole life and eventually I had to do a little bit of translating so they wouldn’t die of dehydration or starvation.

-end of part I-