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For ten days, Zeit journalist Mark Spörrle travelled across Italy with his Italian colleague Beppe Severgnini. When he returned, something had changed – in him.

“You’ve changed,” my wife told me after I’d returned home, “You don’t get irritated when the metro is overcrowded. Or when cyclists almost run you down. This journey was – could it be? – good for you.”

It could be. Though it wasn’t really a journey at all. It was an obstacle course. Eight days from Berlin to Palermo in at least 19 trains and a VW transporter driven in breakneck fashion, on a ferry and the rear seat of a motor scooter being steered through Milan by death-defying bestseller author Beppe Severgnini. Above all of that was the cloud of ash that Icelandic volcano laid over Europe.

They were experiences that can certainly turn a person into someone who sees certain things in a more easy-going way. As for the metro: you’d be happy to even have one in many Italian cities. Or the cyclists in Hamburg who are so proud of shooting precisely past spectacle wearers, old folks and toddlers at 30 kilometres an hour: that’s nothing compared with the killer cyclists of downtown Bolzano!

But, there’s more to it than that. It was the Italian nature that was good for me; or at least parts of it.

For example, I am seriously toying with the idea of getting myself one of those motor scooters that bring you quickly from point A to point B in the city, in slalom if need be, past any traffic jam if – and this is the reason I may not do it in the end – the others let you past. In Germany this can be a serious problem. Here, admittedly, we follow traffic rules without questioning them and become angry at anyone who obviously defies them. In Italy, though, the rules are always questioned. So, a German motorist will sit at a broken traffic light at three in the morning and wait for it to turn green for half an hour before shifting into reverse (after pulling out his hair and chewing on the steering wheel in frustration). An Italian, by contrast, will drive through the red light in certain circumstances at three in the afternoon without hesitating – as long as it’s clear that no one else is coming.

Contagiousness

However, if the light actually were green, the German driver would almost always just drive through it (he’s got a green light). The Italian, by contrast, would always pause, reckoning that the suspiciously fast oncoming cross traffic might make a mistake – it can happen – or that the traffic light may be broken and showing green to all sides. It’s a likeable trait to not entirely switch off one’s brain while driving.

What’s even more likeable to me is the Italian fondness for foods containing chocolate and – a psychologist would say the two belong together – their ability to deal with sudden exceptional circumstances, learned from long years of living in their own country. Would a German taxi driver, after letting off her passenger on the street after only a few kilometres, speed back with squealing tyres and then even jog a few hundred metres alongside the railway station just to hand me, right before my train leaves, the iPhone I’d left in the taxi? Of course not.

But, a Milanese taxi driver would!

What I liked most, though, was the relaxed Italian attitude towards punctuality. While I, on the first day of our journey, arrived for breakfast (almost) to the minute we’d agreed upon, my travelling companion Beppe only showed up, quite relaxed, as it was just about time to leave. This was not at all tragic since Beppe, unlike me, needed only a minute to eat his breakfast.

Beppe’s sense of time was very contagious. Even in Weimar, while still in Germany, I casually strolled up and down in front of the hotel and talked on the telephone for several minutes after the time we’d agreed to depart. Then, just as Beppe showed up, I ambled nonchalantly back inside to grab a sweater. (I admit we missed our train.)

I really became Italian then in a hotel in Calabria. I was almost left behind because I appeared far too late at the reception area, not for a moment thinking that the departure time Beppe had informed me of might actually be a real one and that he by then was long seated outside in the waiting taxi. I cannot entirely rule out that by this time my initial German punctuality may have rubbed off on him. Perhaps we simply swapped our personal punctuality patterns – he late, me on time – over the course of the journey.

For throughout the remainder of our journey together Beppe hurried me on like a German shepherd dog, while I found it exceedingly relaxing to not have to always watch the clock and to transform into an Italian cliché. It’s the secret wish of many Germans, which I now understand even more.