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Martin Varsavski surprised me a little bit when I came across his post about honesty of italian people and, in particular, people from Sardinia where I was born, live and work.
But if Spain has been doing so much better than Italy over the last 20 years, I believe that this is mainly because on the average Spaniards are more honest than Italians and this shows all the way from the guy who rips you off in the Porto Cervo bar, because he argues that you sat in the VIP section of his mediocre bar (50 euros for a mineral water) to electing Silvio Berlusconi as President.
The funniest part of the story is that his examples are about Cala di Volpe, a place located in the middle of the “emerald coast”, very well known as the place where all billionaires go and well known as the most expensive part of Sardinia (if not Italy).
Martin is complaining about a 30 euros taxi and about a 50 euros mineral water, basically saying that italians are not honest and want to rip tourists off. They don’t rip tourists off, it’s all about tourists who have been so stupid to go there as well as very bad travel agencies which didn’t advise/warn them. But most tourists are savvy enough to get a hotel 10km far from that place and to get there for sightseeing only.
The point is that it is an area of Sardinia where rich people go and everyone knows you can easily pay 10.000 euros for a night at the Cala di Volpe hotel or 30 euros for a coffee. So why did Martin take that place as an example to state that Spanish people are more honest than Italian ones?
Martin, while you are free to start a discussion about this subject, I have to say that the example you are using to sustain your thesis is completely off topic and doesn’t really fit with what you are pointing out.
I hope you haven’t been so “stupid” to pay such amount of money for hotels or coffee. If you did, you cannot complain about that, since soccer players who earn 1 Million/month really don’t complain but just have fun while they stay there. You made the decision to go there instead of other more beautiful places in Sardinia, where you pay 70 cents for a coffee and 1.5 euros for mineral water, not me. Not far from there, you can easily find out that someone (who usually remains anonymous) paid for your coffee because you are a tourist and that’s a way to tell you “welcome”. Did anyone tell you about that?
This is just to highlight that people from Sardinia are not only honest, but even more kind than what you can ever think of. I’m sorry Martin didn’t get it.
But, again, Costa Smeralda is not Sardinia (ant it’s far from being Italy!) but an area originally built by the Aga Khan for rich people like him.
