Bucko's World

Italy – you’ve heard of it. World cup winning football team and The Azzuri. World champion Motor Racing team Ferrari and the Tifosi. World champion hunger beating team Pasta with the tomato sauci. Sorry...

Oh yes we all know about Italy. From the super cars to football skills, famous latin temperament to sexy women, fabulous fashion to five reverse speeds on their tanks, we all know and love something about the wellington boot shaped country. There is, of course far more to the place than that, much of which I have learnt about on my recent undercover trip to Sorrento, and much of which I will share with you now.

Traffic.

Like most of Europe, in Italy you drive on the right. Allegedly. The real fact of the matter is you simply drive where suits you best and fuck everyone else. This behaviour is exaggerated by the fact that most of the roads are not suitable for two-way traffic and you therefore just drive straight down the middle and hope the bugger coming the other way bottles out before you do. This isn’t helped either by the roads winding up and down over the mountainous countryside, and being a tourist trap meaning that every other vehicle is a 50-seat coach. Until you’ve been on a bus attempting to reverse back around a hairpin bend with another fifty seater inching past you in the other direction – and you're looking down the 500 foot drop to the left hand side of the coach - you do not know the meaning of adrenaline. To get anywhere around the Neapolitan coast you have to take this single road so to say the traffic is constant and in a hurry is an understatement.

Cars.






Related, no doubt, to the above is cars – and the general state of them. Famous for the most desirable of brands – Ferrari and Maserrati, Lamborghini and Alfa Romeo, Bugatti and Paganini – their automotive history is without compare. So it may come as a bit of a surprise to find that not only will you never see any of these lust-objects on the road, but that the general state of the average Italian’s car is like the last car running at the end of a demolition derby. You will never see more dents, scratches, mismatched or missing bodywork, mot-unfriendly heaps of shit on the road than anywhere other than India. This is in a nation that worships the car and yet they seem to drive them by ear – only stopping when they hear the crash. It doesn’t make sense. It’s almost as if because most of them can’t have the F430 or a Zonda they don’t care about their own mode of transport.

Mopeds.

In a country so famed for its motor cars it is probably fair to say that without the contribution of a far more humble type of transport Italy’s economy would collapse. That form of transport is the ever-so-humble Moped.

Be warned. Not only are they as aurally irritating as a wasp trapped in a jam jar, these death-traps on two wheels will form the constant auditory backdrop to any visit to Italy you may make with the possible exception of only one place – Venice (but don’t bet on it). Normal rules of the road simply do not apply to these contraptions, which ignore everything from one-way streets to pedestrian only areas to riding on the pavement – no area is no-go for them. Add to this that there appears to be no lower age limit to riding these things and you can image the carnage they can reap.

That’s all well and good I hear you cry – but why are they so vital to the economy? This is why. They are school bus, delivery truck, ambulance, telephone kiosk and mobile shop all rolled into one. Without these nimble and seemingly indestructible vehicles to provide cheap transport to the masses nothing could get where it needs to go along the narrow streets of the Neapolitan Riviera. And truly it may be said that safety comes second on these things as we bore witness to the following, all which meant having your left hand off the moped – yes, your BRAKE hand:

We saw: riding whilst smoking a fag; riding whilst holding an unfurled umbrella; riding whilst on a mobile phone and these other beauties too:







Yes, that is a child standing on the heavily damaged scooter.











Yep, not one but two large gas cylinders on this one












Delivery truck – note additional boxes between feet











School bus sans helmet














Seems fine, yes? Well, accept that he's riding on the pavement......







Sexy Cars



One of these two Italian cars is officially the sexiest car in the world. It’s obvious which one isn’t it. Clear as day without a shadow of a doubt. Don’t know which one? Ok, here’s a clue: Whichever one you pick you are wrong. With one of them you are wrong because it came second in poll recently, and the other you’d be wrong because you are a moron.



More Forza Italia to follow soon............