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On the subject of Italy
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myrialux and I were in Italy, we discovered that weather which had us in light jackets, open to catch the breeze, had Italians bundled up in puffy jackets, with scarves wrapped up to their noses, and big fuzzy hats pulled down low. Back home, a bit of web-searching revealed that it's a cultural Italian thing--colpo d'aria, a fear of moving air bringing illness.
I was just now reading part of a website that chronicled a Welsh couple's horse-packing journey from Wales to Jordan, part of which was through Northern Italy, and it seems that the colpo d'aria extends to horses, too. At one stop:
myrialux and I were in Italy, we discovered that weather which had us in light jackets, open to catch the breeze, had Italians bundled up in puffy jackets, with scarves wrapped up to their noses, and big fuzzy hats pulled down low. Back home, a bit of web-searching revealed that it's a cultural Italian thing--colpo d'aria, a fear of moving air bringing illness.I was just now reading part of a website that chronicled a Welsh couple's horse-packing journey from Wales to Jordan, part of which was through Northern Italy, and it seems that the colpo d'aria extends to horses, too. At one stop:
At another place, we experienced more contrasts between our life with our horses and that of our hosts. It was a huge farm building with a small jumping arena outside and one small paddock. Every other bit of land around was used for growing rice, right up to the edge of the buildings. Inside, there were forty horses living in boxes. We asked if our horses could be outside for the night. “Of course, no problem, you can put them in the paddock. But will they be warm enough? What if it rains?” As we watched the sun go down, still wearing t-shirts because it was so warm, two women in the courtyard discussed whether or not to close the top door on a stabled horse wearing a padded rug. They closed the door. We sensed here, and at a few other places in Italy, that some people thought we were being hard on our horses, keeping them outside, but at least they had space, company & fresh air and are rugged up if needs be.
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(I mean, that's mild climate for Welsh beasties. But then I come from the sort of horsiness that means that my pony looked like a teddy bear in the winter, because she was a scaled down draft horse basically, and grew fur like no one's business. Which one regrets come spring, but you can't have everything.)
They didn't stable outside (everyone came in at night) but basically the horses went out in the day time mostly without rugs (except for the retired racing thoroughbreds not bred for New England climes) and except in really bad storms, the top half of the stall door would be open all night.
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At our AirBnB in Florence the owners left a note on the thermostat with strict instructions not to let the heat go below some level, but if we'd left it there we'd have been sweating and unable to sleep all night. We set it back during the day when we weren't there and before we left, figuring that if it was a historic-building thing the nightly dips wouldn't be too bad (the building had survived for 400 years before climate control, after all!), but it makes me wonder if that was just Italian.
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Different customs for different places, maybe? Or perhaps an age thing?
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Of course, Koreans also believe in fan death. My sister and I tried to argue for AGES against our parents that no, running an electric fan in a closed room had never killed us, but they were adamant that this was VERY DANGEROUS.
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I didn't ask him, but I remember my mom earnestly explaining to me that the fan would somehow something something carbon monoxide buildup something something suffocation something something. It never ever happened. I HAVE EMPIRICALLY TESTED IT AND EMERGED ALIVE.
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The place we were staying was a longstanding Italian countship that had intermarried with Americans, so they were better about explaining some of the cultural things than other places might have. Some of it was counter-intuitive to us but sensible once you saw how it worked (some of the food patterns, and the instruction in the sequencing of opening and closing shutters.) And some of it was sort of mysterious, like the previous method for having a hot shower (they had just replaced the wood-burning tank with an electric one the year before, but apparently before that it was more on the order of "build a fire to exact specifications and come back 22 minutes later, perform the correct sequence of levers, and then get four minutes of hot water"
Which makes one wonder how much of that kind of thing is 'this thing works, let's not risk it stopping."
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