the mob.

So someone asked me about the mafia the other day, and I told them I didn’t know anything about it. Well, today on the train from Firenze back to Roma, I found out about the mafia and more. Z and I met a teenage boy on the train, Marcello, who explained a lot of Italian culture to us. He told us how the school system works, and how he thinks that America is very sheltered because everyone has to go to school in their district, so they just end up having friends in their same social class. He said he doesn’t really want to go to America (he’s been to Ohio) but he really like Obama. It seems that everyone here really likes Obama (I even saw an Obama sticker on a scooter the other day). Anyway, in Italy, you get to pick where to go to high school. And the schools are specialized… into a Classical Education or a Math and Science Education. He chose the Classical route and is reading Kafka and learning ancient Greek and Latin. Crazy. Apparently, you don’t apply to any schools either (High School OR University). You just show up on the first day of class. How they manage it, is they just fail you and you get kicked out. So its not a matter of getting into school, but a matter of staying with it, which is a pretty cool concept.
Anyway, at one point we were talking about Naples and our experience there, when Marcello mentioned the garbage problem. Z asked him all of these questions about.. why doesn’t the state do anything about it, and why don’t the people care, and who is running the garbage collection service (because in the US we have to pay for our garbage to be picked up). He told us that the Mafia owns the garbage collection. Somehow they took power over from the state and they now manage the garbage in all of southern Italy. He said the reason Naples is so dangerous and the garbage problem is so bad, is because the families in Naples are fighting (I feel like this is straight out of the 16th century or something) and they don’t have time to keep the peace or figure out the garbage sit. He said that if you go further south, in some places the Mafia acts as a second police, and the cities are really safe because the Mob keeps the peace. “In Campania your camera would never be stolen.”
He also told us a lot about the government situation right now. We were wondering what kind of government Italy had, because we have seen election flyers everywhere, but we are too lazy to look it up ourselves, so we ask. He said that the government is a really bad system because about every three years, the government is overthrown. Right now, Italy is basically an anarchist state, because the government was overthrown about a month ago. So they are having elections now for the new government. They have TONS of parties, not just two. There is everything from communist party, new communist party, socialist party, right-wing party, etc. He said that the government is very easily overthrown, because once the party in office loses majority in the senate, they can’t pass any laws, and as soon as a law isn’t passed, the government falls. Pretty intense. So right now, they are working for a big change in the way the government is set up, so this election is really important because it will determine how the government is set up for a long time.