Yeah Italians are nice and they are not afraid to warm up to strangers quickly. People say Northern Italians are cold, but I have met couple of them in my business trip to Milan in the past(before COVID). That's what I like about Italian people and they say "Don't worry, Don't worry" straight for 20 minutes. I found it endearing.publicduende wrote: ↑April 5th, 2023, 7:35 pmIt's not that French people are weirder than Italians. It's Italians who have a special gift for warming up quickly to any social situation.Lucas88 wrote: ↑April 5th, 2023, 5:32 pmI have admiration for both cultures but definitely love and admire Italy much more. France was indeed a beacon of civilization until relatively recently but Italy was the birthplace of the Renaissance as well as the origin of all Romance culture ever since the expansion of Rome. Italy undoubtedly has a special place in the history of Europe.
When it comes to my own attitude towards French and Italian people, the French are more like a people who I admire for their superior sophistication but that admiration is always from a healthy distance while Italians are a people who I admire for the same reason and whose company I greatly enjoy too. I've met quite a few people from both of these nationalities, mostly from when I was enrolled in immersive language school in Spain. I'm not going to lie: the French students were strange, somewhat aloof and quite frankly a bit difficult to deal with. I didn't enjoy interacting with them despite their high level of culture. But the Italian students? They were all extremely friendly and sociable and welcomed others into their social circles and were a joy to be around. I prefer Italians over Frenchies by far.
They might be insecure, not know anybody, not even speak the foreign language they're learning (as in your case) but they feel that "Italianness" is a positive stereotype hard to die: they feel that, so long they play their hyper-extroverted, histrionic, friendly-to-all personas to a tee, everything will turn out fine. It's as if most European kids, even the Spaniardsa, the Portuguese, the Greek, would always play safe when in an unknown environment. Italians would play an exaggerated version of themselves.


In contrast, I found the French are very aloof and tend to hang out in their own cliques. There were bunch of French exchange students in my High School. About a dozen of them. Not one of them said a single word or spoke any English at all for 45 mins in Physics Class.. Not a single smile, all frowns and they just talked French to each other. They were pretty boring. And I never liked the Haute Cuisine or whatever the French eats. It's too creamy and bland compared to Italian food. Yuck.