Massimo

Our tour guide's name was Massimo, and Massimo was one of the most interesting people that I met on the entire trip. The first time I met him, he really kind of scared me. I'd just taxied over to our hotel, which was near Termini, from Medaglie D'Oro. It was around 7.30 and I thought I was late. My mom was waiting outside for me, and it was the first time I'd seen her in a month. We grabbed my bags and went inside and then, all of the sudden, this 6 foot tall, skinny man is yelling, "Oh, PAM-ela!" in a very excited voice. I had no idea who he was. He told the desk clerk who I was, still in this very excited tone, and I was getting a little scared, but my mom told me that it was just Massimo.

Massimo was a really cool tour guide. He lives in Rome, and I thought he was a tour guide as his job but he's really not. He's a guide on his vacation. He's really an accountant (which might explain why he was so uptight sometimes) and he travels around with groups when he's not working. I can understand why he'd do it; living in Rome is expensive and he probably needs the extra money. He had a huge network of contacts that he was able to utilize when we went to different cities, giving credence to the idea that in Italy it's all about who you know. More than once the guides would mention the fact that they got the job because they were friends with Massimo, which I thought was interesting because in the U.S., we would down-play the friends connection because you never want the idea or thought of nepotism to cloud anything. In America, it's important to have gotten your job on your own and to make your successes on your own, without help. That's not the mentality of Italians, who rely on family members and friends for contacts.

It was very interesting spending time with Massimo because I really got to see things from a more Italian perspective. After probably his fourth day with the group, he began to refer to the group as his "family." That's a really interesting mentality to have. I'm not sure that members of the group really identified as family, but Massmio did because the Italian culture places so much more of an emphasis on families that his thinking is more family-centered than ours' is, perhaps.