Fortunately Dave, I was only visiting and I am now back in Bella Napoli! I do enjoy going back home but after a few days, I am ready to leave again.
The “news” is just an animated version of supermarket tabloids, the conversations I overhear are all void of anything that resembles logical, lucid thought. My fellow Americans are so brain-washed by the television and polarized on every.damn.subject that I mostly avoid all contact.
Eating in a restaurant is a sad experience too, the wait staff throw the food at you in a hurry to get you out of there and who could blame them - they work for less than minimum wage and rely on tips to make up the difference. To get more tips, they need more customers so they rush you out of there so fast I don’t have time to enjoy the food...which may be a good thing becuase the quality is nothing to write ho,e about.
And although the roads are 100 times better, the drivers are total zombies. They drivers here in Italy are bat-shit crazy, but they all expect the worse and account for it. For all the crazy stuff going on, the number of fender-benders are non-existent, relatively speaking.
All that being said, it IS home and I would rather live there than anywhere else. Call me crazy, but it is what it is...