There is so much red tape in these matters.
– The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter

So try this. Quiz the group you’re with at your next party, or office off-site, or in a meeting while doing small talk: ask them what the one place is where they’d like to live for a year, not counting their present location, and if they’re immigrants (about 1 in 33 are – obviously some communities/industries/countries more immigrant-attracting than others) they’re not allowed to mention their places of origin. And then figure out what it says about them that they’d want to live in Vietnam, say, vs. Germany.

One of my ‘places to live’ (not just visit) would be Italy. Every time I’ve visited, the country seems warm (literally, too) and welcoming, the food is obviously spectacular, the country is beautiful, the people are *very* (ahem!) friendly. It’s perfect. But then, many places are nice when you’re on vacation. How did I know it was the place for me? It was the bridge that did it.

“Il ponte” (literally, ‘the bridge’) is the very Italian practice of creating a long weekend. If a holiday falls in the middle of the week, people simply take the extra day(s) off between the holiday and the weekend. And enough people do this, thereby forcing offices/governments/schools to capitulate and just stay closed, too.

Of course, people around the world are wont to take extra days off and create longer vacations. It’s just efficiency-seeking behavior. It’s only the Italians, however, who’ve named this practice, branded it, created a mass movement out of it, and are now taking full advantage of its benefits. Salute!