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Naples.Is.Bananas. Seriously. I thought driving in DC or LA was bad but they’ve got nothin’ on bella Napoli. I have seen more crazy crap in the 2+ months I’ve been here than I did in years in CA or VA.

Driving here is….special. As an American, I have to follow the SOFA between the US and Italy. This includes the road sign test to give you your “Italian driver’s license.” (In quotes because it’s not really an Italian one but it does let the Carabineri/Polizia know that I’m a dumb American.) So, in order to take this test you first have to sit through a painful and dragging powerpoint brief of laws, signs, etc. Very dull and unexciting. Be jealous. I managed to miss this the first time around (We were house hunting. And as much as I love him, I don’t exactly trust my future domiciliary choices to D and D alone. My input is worth about 80%.) so I had to make it up at a later date. Not too big of a problem since they have the class every other week or so.

So I finally went back to the Motor Vehicles Office and asked the girl at the desk to take the test. All it is is a bunch of road signs, that’s it. You can only miss 3 or else you fail. So I take my test and hand it in. The girl puts the answer key over it, looks at me, and says,

“Well, you technically fail. But it’s okay, I pass you. Here’s your license!”

Inspires confidence huh? In my defense, the ones I got wrong were the ones I second guessed myself on and changed the answer after the fact. That’s besides the fact though. The point is that I failed, and she still gave me the license because she felt nice. It kind of sums up the attitude towards driving here in general.

Thus far, here are some of the things I’ve seen since I’ve been here with regards to driving. Keep in mind that we have the remnants of this problem going on and this does contribute to some of the behaviors.

1. Since I just mentioned it, countless people just stop their vehicles on the side of the HIGHWAY (or road, or wherever. it doesn’t really matter.) and toss their garbage onto the pile that’s already there. Why not use the dumpsters? Well, because Naples has decided that it was tired of seeing over flowing dumpsters so the city just took them away. And since they didn’t like seeing plastic bags in the trash, they banned those too. Not even joking, not even a little bit.

2. Vespas, scooters, and motorcycles. Hate them with a burning passion. They weave and bob in and out of traffic and dart out when there’s no space because they can’t wait to get behind you, where there’s no one. Helmets are rarely, rarely worn and if they are, they are usually adorning someone’s elbow or something because the law apparently doesn’t specify that helmets are to be worn ON THE HEAD. Brilliant.

3. Horse and buggies. Some people take these on the highway people! I don’t care how good your horse is, it’s still only 1 HP, no match for even the smallest Fiat Pandas on the road. Good way to back traffic up.

4. Kind of related to #2 but motorcycles going the OPPOSITE direction of traffic on the shoulder. Threw me for a loop that’s for sure but there he was, happily zooming down the shoulder. I bet he missed his exit.

5. People here stop and reverse to get to their exits ALL the time. And the most baffling is that other drivers don’t even think twice about it. I’ve seen people come to a stop in the right lane and reverse to get to that exit they just missed. Or get off at an exit and realized it’s the wrong one so they reverse to get back on the highway. I may or may not have taken advantage of this “skill” so far.

6. All this is in addition to the normal, every day, mundane craziness of local driving too. The nice thing about having an American sized SUV is that on small roads, small cars back up and make room for you. That’s not saying my car hasn’t been touched yet. It’s already been scratched on both sides. Once was D’s fault, totally side swiped a parked car – oops. And the other, D was driving to work and some guy swerved in and side swiped him WHILE MOVING and just kept going. Oh well. We knew that whichever car we brought over would get dinged up but it still sucks.

I’m sure there’s more and I can almost guarantee there will be a RW: MK v2.0 at some point.