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> Like Abruzzo or Calabria, it looks nice and folksy when you visit a week or two [...] organised crime is a massive issue.

I'd like to hear more.. I can't even imagine what this is supposed to look like in places like that. Are there roving gangs, probably not. Home invasions? Not for pots and pans and crockery..

(I mean if one's chances of crime victimhood go from 1in100000 in nominally/outwardly more affluent places to 1in99000.. that's more dangerous on paper and for statisticians, but people aren't hiding in their cellars, with communal life abolished etc.)

I also wonder what "desperately poor" means in 2021 in any EU region no matter how desolately remote. Is the income too poor to maintain a sneaker collection and latest FitBit, gaming rig or there's a lack of escooters to rent, that's one thing. A persistent (good)food shortage at the prevailing local income level or totally war-like infrastructure levels, now that's another thing. Which is it? Tapwater rollout levels from 70 years ago won't tell =)

I'm probably not the only European who is most curious about places exactly like that but within the Schengen+Euro area, just in case one wants to "semi-soft-'dropout' but without visa/statehood/banking headaches"... (although I'd still be shooting for somewhere slightly hotter in such a future eventuality =)

Calabria is home of 'ndrangheta, probably the most powerful Italian mafia.

I went to visit a friend's parents a few years ago in Calabria. They don't have running water after 8pm, houses have home-made water tanks that they fill during the day that they use to supply water after that time. Bear in mind that this wasn't the countryside, it was in a reasonably sized city.

Walking around the neighborhood I noticed that there were no wifi networks at all.

The roads hadn't been resurfaced since the 1970s according to the locals and I totally believe them.

There's a reason Italians call it Calafrica. It definitely doesn't feel like western Europe.

> I can't even imagine what this is supposed to look like in places like that.

You open a shop, don't pay the right people when asked, your shop gets burnt or your car gets smashed. You are asked to hire this or that guy "as a favor to X"; you don't get hired here or there because "friend of X" got it instead. You may or may not build here or there, because X decided so. You know certain illegal activities are going on in certain places, but you cannot stop them nor complain to authorities, or there will be consequences. In the worst areas, wearing any expensive item without the protection of X is a recipe for getting assaulted and robbed. You go to the wrong cafe at the wrong time, you might get shot at. In certain professions (accountancy, law, politics, hospitality), getting killed is a distinct possibility, and you might be asked to perform unethical acts very often. Public-office holders are determined by X; a lot of town infrastructure rots away, because maintenance funds have been siphoned off (organised crime makes money from building and demolishing, not from maintenance); town improvements cost twice as much as they should, which means other budget items get half as much as they should. Ignorance is widespread and encouraged, since education breeds "troublemakers". And if X decides to publicly humiliate you, he will do that with impunity.

It's not that people live in fear, but you feel the limit to your personal freedom in very practical terms. The frequency of that feeling depends on your personal circumstances and how bad the situation is in that particular area, but it will be there.

> Is the income too poor to maintain a sneaker collection and latest FitBit

Your school is decrepit, and occasionally will literally fall on your head. Drugs are cheap and plentiful since you're 12-13, and by then you're probably smoking anyway. When you go to the hospital for a procedure, unless you have friends who can guarantee you a good doctor, you might come back with something worse. The chances of your bicycle or scooter getting stolen as soon as you drop your guard, are very high. Your playground is routinely vandalised as soon as it's fixed. You finish school and there are no jobs. You start a business and there are no customers - just taxes. You end up working illegally, with no protections - if you get injured on the job (or die) there will be no insurance payout, and if the authorities find out, they'll want a bunch of money you don't have. Your employer says this month he ain't paying you, good luck. No regular contract means that, by the time you retire, you will have a minimal pension that won't allow you even to live on ramen. The buildings you live and (not) work in, are not compliant with building regulations, with all that it entails. You cannot get a mortgage, because no legal job; so you borrow money from a dodgy "friend", buy a house cash-in-hand, and then find out it was built illegally and is now worthless - unless you find another sucker... Dodgy Friend after a while asks for twice the interest, and if you can't pay your physical health will suffer pretty dramatically. Broadband is a luxury (although 4G helped there). Public transport, where it still runs, has the same frequency of snow in California. Litter is everywhere. You're utterly bored on most days. Everyone is out to scam you, and you're out to scam everyone. You're not hungry - food is actually cheaper and tastier in those areas, if you don't mind the fact that it's often not as quality-controlled as elsewhere (and occasionally dangerous). You may or may not be able to buy the stuff you need. You live in houses you cannot afford to repair. If you're disabled, good luck surviving. If you have mental health issues, you'll likely end badly.

As a paradox, the only way to escape the daily reminder that you're poor is to incessantly pursue the pointless display of (often illegally or violenty obtained) wealth - like flashing a new iPhone or driving a new Mercedes - which makes you even poorer; or to do drugs, which makes you poorer and sicker. When you try to complain that you're poor, you are told "but why did you get an iPhone/buy drugs then?".

Eventually you give up, jump on a train, and go be a better-respected slave in a richer city or country. If your family has a bit of money, at 18 you go study in the rich North and just stay there. Your support network is now broken, possibly forever.

>peeing against houses was considered a bit rude but somewhat normal in a pinch.

I find that statement misleading. No, peeing against houses was/is not a socially accepted behaviour in Italy, at least not where I lived. Normal implies some degree of acceptance. You can receive a hefty fine for indecent behavior and people don't react well when drunk rowdy students "tag" their turf.

To be fair I grew up in a northern Italian town (~5 000 people) in the 00's and we had a few "peeing spots," usually windowless (north) walls of old houses in the historical center. We rarely peed there--as the GP put it, we only did when "in a pinch."

Coincidentally, toilets in old houses there were really just small rooms jutting out of the northern part of the building that had a hole at the bottom where the waste would just plop down into the soil. Maybe that's where the habit started?

Also the only time somebody got fined for peeing was when one of the local troublemakers peed on a prominent flagpole in the middle of the day--it made it into the local newspaper's locandina :)

I said "somewhat normal", "a bit rude", and "in the '80s".

I could bet you a billion old Lira that, if you went to a periferia today and asked around, you'd find that it still happens. Obviously it won't happen in gentrified areas and touristic city centres, where I'm sure the municipale (or whatever they're called today in this or that region) is focused on maintaining the honor and decoro of the city. But in the areas nobody really cares about? For sure.

When I first arrived in Bologna ten years ago, I vividly remember an old man at the side of a main road peeing into the bushes.

In Centrale o in Bolognina? "Fun" areas...

I grew up in what was then called la Pescarola (Zanardi / Marco Polo / Agucchi).

Nope, I know from experience that peeing in public is very common in piazzas in the center at night because everyone is driving beer and the are no public facilities and bars generally have a single (often filthy) toilet for all their customers to share :)

But that's different. This was near Lunetta Gamberini in broad daylight :) To be fair it's not something I've seen since.

Bologna can be weird. I remember speaking with someone who'd spent his military service there, and his first words where "such a dirty and criminal city". That's not what the stats say or what the classic image of the city is (nor what my experience generally was, growing up there), but obviously stats are not the full picture and heaven does not exist.

> When I was growing up in Italy in the '80s, peeing against houses was considered a bit rude but somewhat normal in a pinch.

I don't know what part of Italy you're from, but I don't think that would be considered normal at all (I'm italian too). It's quite offensive, the least you can expect is somebody yelling at you, possibly someone coming to slap your face (rightfully so, imho).

I don't disagree, because "gentrification and improvement in education standards have resulted in progress, reducing this kind of behavior".

I could bet you good money it still happens, in periferia.