Senselessland (chapter 7)

Impressions and images from Belpaese

Mail. What is there of special in mail? Not too much. Of course, if you are not in Italy. There everything can be special, even mail. Of course we talk about paper mail, the traditional mail. Now it has been clarified that, let's explain what goes on in the so called Bel Paese. There mail is divided in ordinary mail and priority mail. The difference is in price, of course. Priority mail is more expansive because of faster delivering. If ordinary mail arrives at destination in nearly a week, document belonging to the second category can arrive only in a couple of days. Priority mail is more expensive because customer choose to have a different kind of service. Now, in Italy there's a new kind of service: the super-priority mail. It means for ONLY 9 Euros you can be sure your priority mail will be delivered. That's it. Now if want to be sure priority mail - the more expensive one - be at destination you have to pay extra-money. Something weird. Why to pay twice for the same service? Priority mail means postmen and post offices can move a document to a point of the country to an another in a period of time shorter than ordinary mail. Italians, as usual, don't complain. There's something in Italian recalling Russian people we find in Tolstoy's or Dostoevsky's novels: a sense of resignation and inactive reception of events. But there's no time for anthropology: foreigners have to understand why they have been asked to pay 9 Euros of extra-money for something should be already guarantee.