My dad used to have a ritual whenever he checked into a hotel or motel room.
He’d go straight to the telephone book — look it up, kids — flip to the P’s and see how many Puglieses were listed. Outside of the New York/New Jersey area and the Northeast in general, there usually were not many.
So, he was ecstatic when we went to Italy in 1992 and 1997 and found hundreds of listings for Pugliese — albeit with different spellings — in the phone books from Milan to Sicily.
My dad died 10 years ago and he would not recognize Italy today, starting with the phone books. There are none. Nor are there telephones in most places where tourists drop their luggage in 2025.
My daughters, Victoria and Alexandra, and I visited Italy recently. We took a Disney Cruise from Barcelona to Rome and then spent another week in Italy. It was their first time in those countries; part of the reason for the trip was to celebrate my oldest daughter’s graduation from the University of Central Florida. It was my third visit and, mamma mia, have things changed in the last three decades. This isn’t my grandfather’s Italy.
Of course, one would expect changes anywhere in the world from 30 years ago. But these were Mount Vesuvius-like shifts, many not of my liking.
To no one’s surprise, cell phones are everywhere, locals and tourists alike, young and old. Even the priests and nuns walking around the Vatican were on their iPhones. Meanwhile, phone booths and the cards purchased and used to call back to the United States back in the day have disappeared.
Menus in trattorias can be found on bar codes as often as on paper or plastic. Thank goodness we all have cell phones!
The lira (and peseta and franc) has been replaced by the Euro, but you still end up with a pocket full of change.
Diet Coke used to be sold as Coke Lite but now Coke Zero is the alternative for those who find Coke too sweet.
Those Coke Zero bottles and cans must be recycled. Recycling has come to Italy big time. There are colored bins everywhere — including in your Airbnb — for plastic, glass, paper and organic waste.
Those Airbnbs have replaced pensiones as homes away from home for tourists who want to skip pricey hotels and have kitchens. FYI: the bidets are still there.
Even the ever-present cigarette smoke that used to put clouds over patrons indoors and outdoors has been snuffed out by anti-smoking laws — for the most part.
What has not disappeared are the tourists. In this year of the 2025 Jubilee, or Holy Year, in the Catholic Church, they have swarmed not only Rome but the entire peninsula. A visit to the Trevi Fountain will find you waiting in a line for hours just to toss a coin over your right shoulder, guaranteeing you will return to the Eternal City. Supposedly, there was a ban on sitting on the Spanish Steps to minimalize the tourist crush. However, on the night when we visited, there were a lot of people resting on those famous steps — and no one saying a word.
The pick pockets remain staples of the Metro, operating as teams with one to distract and the other to dispose of your wallet, purse or cell phone. Glad to report that other passengers are quick to alert the naive tourists of those tactics.
Finding the real Italy still exists
But what truly has not changed is the culture, cuisine and citizens of Italy. It also remains a small world (had to get one Disney reference in).
We had dinner one night in Rome at Osteria Mamma Mia; the owner is Marco Martinelli, who became friends with Cognizant Classic executive director Todd Fleming when the latter spent a year living in Italy. While we chatted about our mutual friend, our waiter found out I was a sports editor and proceeded to spend the rest of the evening talking NBA and his time spent in the U.S. when he attended Monmouth University in New Jersey and was introduced to American sports. We are now friends on Instagram.
During the cruise, my youngest daughter befriended a young man from Toronto who has been playing junior hockey in the hinterlands of Canada. When our families broke bread at a trattoria in Trastevere, his father turned out to be a huge Edmonton Oilers fan so, naturally, we talked about the Stanley Cup Finals and the Florida Panthers over oxtail and pasta.
During lunch at a farm in Tuscany, sitting outdoors near a building older than the U.S., the family sharing our table included a woman who was heavily involved in the equestrian world when she was younger. Of course, she was familiar with the horse jumping, dressage and polo that goes on every winter in Wellington. She received bonus points for knowing Bruce Springsteen’s daughter competes on the horse-jumping front.
We saw people wearing Florida Gators national championship shirts, Tampa Bay Buccaneers jerseys and, of course, New York Yankees caps and shirts.
Still, it was amazing how much had changed in the decades since my last visit starting with booking things and making reservations. It’s all about web sites and apps and bar codes and I was grateful for my oldest daughter’s expertise on those fronts as well as her speaking Italian.
Perhaps the biggest change of all was in the Calabrian region where half of my family has its roots. As we took the high-speed train from Rome to Catanzaro, we noticed large windmill farms atop many of the mountains that make up that region of Italy. There had to be hundreds. I later did some research and found out many had been constructed only in the last few years. There even were reports that the organized crime syndicates had their hand in these apparently lucrative operations.
It was jarring to see a beautiful mountain scene with pine trees, olive groves and the blue sea in the distance – and notice windmills with their giant propellers slowly turning atop the ridges.
Returning to Borgia and family’s roots
But once we reached the narrow streets of my paternal grandparents’ hometown of Borgia, it was as if it was 1997 again — or perhaps even 1927. We found the World War I monument with the names of the town’s residents who perished in the war to end all wars. Included on that list is my great-grandfather, Domenico Pugliese.
The people of Borgia still gather at the town plaza all day, sitting on benches, talking, playing chess, napping. They still sit outside the cafes, sipping espresso, and chatting for hours. They still want to assist an American family digging up their roots in the municipio building.
We were hoping to find Armando, the town’s records clerk who was a great help in the past researching our family tree — stopping what he was doing one day in 1997 to spend an hour with my dad and I looking up our ancestors. It was all in large record books back then; they had not gone digital. I took a photo of him and his record books and wanted to give him a copy.
Showing locals the photo, everyone knew him and told us he had retired a few years ago. Leonardo, who spoke good English, said the former clerk sits on a bench in the plaza every day at 5 p.m., usually reading a book.
Sure enough, when I returned later in the day, I found Leonardo who led me right to Armando. He did not remember me but smiled when he saw the photo of his younger self, his now silver hair dark brown and not a wrinkle to be found. When he was told the story behind the photo, his eyes teared up and he insisted on buying me a drink. Over glasses of lemoncello, I spoke about our current trip, my family and caught up with him with the help of Leonardo.
When we parted an hour later, the three of us exchanged email addresses with the promise to keep in touch.
Perhaps all these changes are not so bad after all.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Mamma mia! Italy has changed a lot in 30 years, but thankfully some things remain the same
Reporting by Nick Pugliese, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
