What's your name?

Today I'm gonna talk about names and surnames in Italy and Spain, and the traditions about it.

The first big difference between Italy and Spain is that Spanish people has two surnames, while in Italy you have just one.
There are two surnames because you will get the first one from your father and the second one from your mother, in Italy you just get your father's one.

The second difference is about names, in Spain is not unusual to call your baby after one of  the parents; so if you have a boy, you call him as the father and if you have a little girl, you can name her as the mother. This happens because is almost impossible that even if you have your parent's name to become homonymous, for example my girlfriend have been called after her mom, but they don't have the same last name.
In Italy the tradition (almost in disuse nowadays) is to call your son/daughter after the grandparents, in fact, i have my grandfather's name; in this case names "skip" one generation.

Let's see some examples about it:

SPAIN:

• FATHER: Juan García Pérez
• MOTHER: María Fernández González
• SON: Juan García Fernández
• DAUGHTER: María García Fernández

You can see how even if both the children have the parent's name, they are not homonymous. Even if you get your parents' last names, is obvious how your mother's one is actually her father's surname.

ITALY:

• GRANDFATHER: Roberto Rossi
• GRANDMOTHER: Lucia Bianchi
• FATHER: Mario Rossi
• MOTHER: Giulia Verdi
• SON: Roberto Rossi
• DAUGHTER: Lucia Rossi

As you can see there's nothing related to the mother in the children's names, it's kind of a patriarcal tradition, but of course you can choose either your maternal/paternal grandfather/mother name for your baby.

In this case you see that the grandfather and the grandson are homonymous, this is pretty common in Italian tradition.

Well, it's all for now, tell me if you have different traditions in your country about names. Byee :)

It's time to celebrate!!!

Today I'm gonna talk about festivities and the differences between Italy and Spain about them.

The first one I'm going to talk about is Christmas, you may think it's the same all over the world, anxious children waiting for their gifts on Christmas Eve, someone get them on the 24^th, someone(like in Italy) on the 25^th, but it's not always true, let's see why.

In Italy we have “Babbo Natale” (Santa Claus) who carries the presents, well, actually I discovered some years ago that it's not true! It was all a big lie set up by my parents, so traumatic :(

Well, let's go back to Babbo Natale, you write a letter to him with all your wishes and send it to the North Pole, hoping that you've been good enough to receive those things, and if you have, he takes big gifts at your house, he parks on your roof his sledge guided by flying reindeers, in order to get in passing through your chimney.

Santa Claus with his flying sledge

Almost two weeks later, on January the 6^th, more joy for the little children, 'cause “La Befana” is coming!

Yes!Because on Epiphany Eve an old, evil, poor, naughty witch, called Befana, will come to your house riding a flying broom( yes like Harry Potter in “Quidditch” ), taking candies to the good children and pieces of coal(actually made out of black colored sugar!) to the bad ones. Those candies come in a big sock ("La calza della befana") and then children spend all the day trying to increase their diabetes eating as much as they can! Glorious childhood!

La befana

In Spain is more or less the opposite, on Christmas day children will get candies or some small gift, depending on family traditions, but on the 6^th of January they will get the main prize!

But as you may have guessed, it's not Santa Claus who do this, and not even the Befana, so who?!

The answer is “The three Kings/Wise Men”, in Spain they're called “Los Reyes”.

Los Reyes do the same as Babbo Natale does, they deliver you gifts, but of course you must have been a good boy/girl, and have written the letter with your wishes.

Los Reyes

Well, this is all I had to say about Christmas, but staying in December, there's another difference.

I don't know why, but what everyone calls “April fools' day” (in Italy “Pesce d'Aprile”) which is on April the 1^st , in Spain is in December, exactly on 28^th and it is called “Día de los inocentes”, the essence is the same, people making fool out of someone else, just they are on different days!

Let me know if you know other differences of this kind, or maybe about something else, Byee!!! :)

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 :)

About shopping

Hello everyone, in this post we're going to talk about shopping:

• In Spain, the clothes are more expensive, that's if you compare the same kind of shops;
• In Italy, the  clothes have best quality, even if you can buy them at a lower price (this advice does not work for chinese stores XD);
• There's a little difference between Spanish and Italian sizes. In Italy you're 4 sizes bigger than in Spain, it means that if you fit in a 40 in Spain, in Italy you'll fit in a 44, it's  very traumatic for Spanish people, but a great feeling for Italians, especially for girls! =P
• In italy you can find people wearing clothes with their own flag (Italian proud XD).. meanwhile in Spain it would not be considered so agreeable to wear a t-shirt with the Spanish flag (especially in Catalunya! :D ).

Well, tell me if you come up with other differences about shopping :)

Edit: It doesn't matter if you're Italian, Spanish, black, white, green or Martian, wherever you come from, if you go shopping with your girlfriend you're going to wait for ages while she's trying the whole shop! XD

Little differences

I'm Italian and my girlfriend is Spanish, these countries aren't so different, we have more or less the same culture, but of course we have different traditions.

We differ mainly in small things, and now I'm going to tell you a funny story about it.

It was one of the first dinner with my girlfriend's family, there was beans, something I really like, but then I looked into my dish, and I noticed something missing in it, so I looked my girlfriend and said: <<Why is there no pasta in my beans?!>>.

A simple question for me, because I eat it pretty often at my home, but I still remember the look in her family eyes.

There was a mix of surprise and hilarity going on, so after a bit of embarrassing silence they asked me back: <<Why would you put pasta in beans?!>>.

Well, I'm pretty shy and that was a quite of an awkward moment for me, but it made me think on how something that for me is so normal, an everyday thing, could be so strange for someone who lives just 1000km away from me.

Tell me what you think about it, and if you have similar stories. :)

Photos:

(Beans with pasta)

(Just beans)