Crosswalks

Today I’m gonna tell you a funny story about crosswalks, you may wonder what's funny about it, well, keep reading and you'll find out.

First of all, cars should stop at a crosswalk when a pedestrian is approaching to it, this is a fact, but well, let's say that in Italy we're a kinda “open-minded” when it comes to rules, so we see them in a different way.

We have a “practice” for which we stop only if the pedestrian is already in the middle of the street, no matter whether there's a zebra crossing or not, I know it's wrong, but that's how we're used to.

This practice leads pedestrians to cross even if there's no crosswalk around, and despite red traffic light(for walkers).

Now that you know the “basis” I can tell you about my first meeting with my actual Spanish girlfriend in Rome, back in 2012. I remember we were sightseeing in the city, at one moment we had to cross a road, so I held her hand and started crossing, but suddenly she stopped in the middle of the street, I was kinda worried because cars were coming to us, then I said quite nervous: <<What are you doing?! Keep walking!>> and she replied: <<Are you crazy or what!? Don't you see there's the red light?!>>. So we had to go back to the sidewalk and wait for the green light. I spent quite of an hard time trying to explain her that this is how we act in Italy. Clearly it wasn't the best first impression ever, but well, we eventually ended up as a couple anyway, everything went better than expected!!!

I couldn't understand her reasons until I’ve been to Spain, there I realized that rules work, at least when it's about crosswalks!

We were walking around her town, holding our hands ( how sweet XD), and well, I was thinking whether crossing the road or not, so when I decided to go for it, I looked to my left to see if cars were passing by, and I was surprised to discover that there was already a car stopped a the zebra crossing, waiting for us! I thought, “how is it possible?! I didn't even know if I had to cross, and the car was there waiting, just because we were hanging around the crosswalk!”

You could think “c'mon this is the rule, of course he was waiting for you!”, well, maybe you're right but it's not so simple if you've been living for 23 years knowing that “that's the rule, but you can do what you want!”.

Tell me if in one of your travels you realized that the other country had different practices or traditions about something you thought was the “standard”. :)

And if you want us to talk about something more specific, just tell us and we will work on it! Byee :)