When in Rome.

I feel for Angela Merkel and the whole EU catastrophe, especially with countries threatening a walk out if the northern EU countries don't come up with a bail out solution containing a lot of money. It continues to be a clash of cultures that meets head on at around lunch time because that's when everyone in the Med countries, Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal head off for a nice glass of vino, some pasta, paella or moussaka that Momma made and then a long afternoon nap. I can see Angie now, as she diligently works the morning meetings, looking for solutions to then sit on her hands for the rest of the afternoon as the boys fill up on wine and bread, napping, dreaming of past glories, only to return when the day is finished as far as Angie is concerned.

It's a simplification and lots of people make fun of the whole siesta scenario but it feels so real after spending a few weeks in a small Italian hill town in the Abruzzo region. No tourist buses frequent the thousand year old church and piazza, no capital works take place in the town and the number of men gathering in the piazza, not doing anything, increases every day. It's a pace so slow, it's hard to see any change on a daily, weekly or monthly basis and in the old Australian vernacular, it seems no one is getting stuck into anything, as it's too hard to fight centuries of Laissez-faire attitudes and the right to take a four hour nap in the middle of the day, every day.

Coming from a corporate background, where you need twelve hours a day just to get through the emails, the indifference to the situation seems all the more frustrating when not just this town, but all towns in the Med countries shut down without thought for what these naps mean to the future. It seems they are happy to snooze into the next decades hoping that someone or some country will come up with solutions as long as they don't involve change. Change to cultural norms and change to working attitudes that don't involve a basket of bread, a glass of red wine and a kip every afternoon.

I can still see Angie sitting there, waiting for someone to join in after lunch. The trick for her will be to figure out an enterprise bargaining agreement to get rid of the mid day down time and find something worthwhile to replace it with? So what could be better than a long lunch with alcohol followed by a nap, every day? I'm struggling to come up with any suggestions but I know if the cycle isn't broken somehow, the need and the opportunity for change will be a long time coming and I'm not sure the northern EU countries will be patient forever.

OMG it's nearly one o'clock, best head back to Nonna's, as the cannelloni won't last with a couple of cousins coming over, and what if they take all the beds, my day would be ruined (pardon the Roman pun), if I don't get a couple of solid hours sleep. No telling how I'll fit back into work when I get back home? When in Rome.