I’m driving down Via IV Giugno (June 4th Street) from Serravalle, where our apartment is, into Dogana. Four lanes of divided highway, it’s a curvy stretch of road. Drivers here take the curves fast and accelerate on the long straightaways. Everyone, it seems, is in a big hurry. What’s the speed limit? I don’t know. If these maniacs know, they don’t care. In the interest of safety, of yielding the road to them, I stay in the right lane. One after another, they loom in my rearview mirror and bear down on my rear bumper, then fly past me on the left. It’s a nerve-wracking fact of life over here.
I look down at the speedometer. It says I’m going 50. That should be fast enough, I think. In mph it might be, but then I remember we’re in kilometer country. I multiply by 6 to see that I’m actually going 30 mph. Pretty slow. Let’s get going, gramps.
Just past the supermarket is a gas station where I typically fill up, and next to it a bar where we occasionally stop for cappuccino and a pastry. This trip the price of gas has been holding steady, around 1.70 euro a liter. I sense that is a lot. But just how a lot is it? There are 3.785 liters in a gallon. Multiply that by 1.70, you get 6.45 euros for one gallon of gas. Convert euros to dollars–a euro costs anywhere from 1.05 to 1.10–and that steps the price up to about $7 a gallon. Dang.
The other night at dinner with two friends, we were describing our drive from Detroit to Yosemite, when we go to visit our son out there. They wonder: How far is that? I explain it’s a four-day drive, eight hours a day. You pause as chins drop, then return to normal position. Adding: it’s about 2400 miles. How far is that in kilometers? Divide by 6 and you drive 4000 kilometers. Chins drop again. In Italian you don’t say dang. You say: però!
Weights and measures. And math.
I buy milk by the liter. We pour it in coffee. If we’ve brought home a leftover dessert like cookies or crostata, those are good with a glass of milk. I suppose this is an American thing. I had a hunch milk might be expensive, but just how expensive I wasn’t sure. According to Numbeo, the world’s largest cost of living database, ranking the cost of a liter of milk in 100 countries, Italy ranks 37, the US is 78. Let’s do the math. Two days ago I paid 2.19 euro for a liter of hyper-pastuerized lasts-a-long-time milk. Basically the cabernet sauvignon of the dairy department. How many liters in a gallon, at what price, converted to dollar cost? I ran these numbers twice, so gobsmacked I was when I saw the price: $9.11 a gallon.
I had a hunch that for most foods, the differences weren’t great. There are real economies. Wine, for example. And pasta. No surprise. But after running the numbers on milk, I Iooked at other items on the grocery store shelves, comparing Italy prices to US prices. They’re about the same. Within reason. Except for eggs.
You buy eggs over here in cartons of four. That should tip you off right away, that eggs are expensive. The ones I bought recently, to go with my cabernet sauvignon, last-a-long-time milk were 2.39 euro for four eggs. Do the math, that’s over $7 for a dozen eggs.
I’ve been wondering about coffee, a staple, almost as important as air to Italians. Typically an espresso costs about a euro. For a cappuccino, add .50 to the price. There are some fancy coffees that run up the price. Tizi likes a monte bianco. Don’t ask me what that is. I’ve never paid much attention, but I’m sure it costs more than an espresso. It has its own monte bianco cup, after all. But extra-special coffee? Down in Rimini a new Pascucci bar opened a couple years ago, based on the Starbucks model. Why would I go there? Why would anyone go there? I don’t know where else you can get a Frappo Shake or Passion Fruit Bubble Tea or, my favorite, a Frappo Confuso.
It seems like a cool space. It’s always crowded, mostly with young Italians (who sit and smoke and vape outside). Just once—maybe today?—I’d love to hang out there to hear someone order “a half-caf, non-fat, extra hot, no foam, with a splash of almond milk” coffee–in Italian. How many pumps of carmel? Don’t forget the soy! How much would such a concoction cost, and how would that price compare to the US Starbuck pricing?
Then there’s restaurants. They used to be cheap. Back in the lire days
Tizi and I went out for lunch yesterday at a restaurant nearby. We had water (yes, you pay for water over here), a half bottle of wine, sizable pasta orders each, a large grilled chicken dish that we split, roasted potatoes, and sautéed greens. It was a lot of food. The cost was 51 euros, about $56. Rule of thumb right now is you spend 20-40 euros per person in restaurants over here. A comparable lunch back in the US, approximating the quality of the food, would be more, probably a lot more.
Before the euro we paid with lire. Those were the good old days. We would have paid maybe 40,000 lire for that lunch. Sounds like a lot. Math was a joy back then. Divide that number by two and ditch the last three zeroes to get a dollar figure.
That was then. There’s much less joy in doing the math now.