Three more things that are different here

1. Whether you buy produce at the little fruit and vegetable market in town, or at the big supermarket on the outskirts, you don't pick up anything without first putting on a plastic disposable glove.

I'd initially assumed you didn't need to bother with gloves if you were handling things like bananas, which come securely packaged in their own peels, or potatoes, where cooking is going to kill other people's lingering germs. But when Pam took me to a supermarket and caught me picking up an orange with my bare hands she sternly told me that this was Not Done and that I had to wear gloves like everyone else.

Since then I've been looking around and noticing that this is a rule just about everyone really does follow. Even men, whom I chauvinistically assumed wouldn't care all that much about vegetable hygiene. I snuck this picture of a gentleman obediently picking out fruit with a gloved hand at the fruit stand that I patronize several times a week. (Those are blood oranges in the foreground.)

On the other hand (har har), I haven't seen any of those hand-sanitizer dispensers that are so ubiquitous in markets and other public places in California. There we're worried about protecting ourselves from other people's germs. Here in Italy, people are expected to take responsibility for not imposing their germs on others. It's the difference between Americans' trademark every-man-for-himself individualism and the more communal attitude of at least some corners of the Old World.

They don't offer take-out drinks, either

2. If there's take-out coffee anywhere here, I haven't seen it.

There are dozens of caffes in this little town, and while they're rarely crowded they all seem to be getting enough custom to keep going. They serve coffee and pastries in the morning, espresso and panini in the afternoon, and wine, beer, and spirits all day and into the evening.

But whatever they're offering, you drink it there on site. I didn't realize how deeply ingrained the take-out ethos was in me until I got here and kept realizing that I couldn't offer to run out and buy a coffee for the electrician, or bring one back to Danny while he was engaged in some household drudgery, or grab one on my way to somewhere else. Suddenly I had to sit down in a commercial establishment and drink coffee like a civilized person.

Of course a not unrelated aspect of this is that the coffee drinks these establishments offer range from small (a cappuccino) to thimble-sized (an espresso). There wouldn't really be much point in getting them to go, since they take only minutes to drink; when people linger  over coffee in a caffe, as they very often do, it's to savor the atmosphere or continue a conversation, not to work through a lot of fluid ounces. Whereas the big tubs of coffee that Americans are used to are designed to be brought to the office or hauled around in the car and consumed over a much longer stretch of time. They're not a break from work or commuting or whatever, but a way to avoid a break.

3. I'm used to all the lotions and creams promising to get rid of wrinkles and restore youthful sparkle to your skin. They have those here in Italy, too. But what I hadn't seen before, at least not in quantity, was such an array of products that promise to turn back the clock on your lumpy old backside.

I guess I'm so accustomed to the fantasy that facial wrinkles can be smoothed away with a little high-priced grease that it no longer strikes me as insane. But I'm sort of aghast at the thought of how many people evidently are smoothing on all these anti-cellulite and "remodeling" preparations in hopes of making their rumps as taut and smooth as a 20-year-old athlete's.

I'm sure there's an important sociological point to be made about this, but I have no idea what it is.