BY LAVINIA BUTT
viaggi
Despite Matera being a decent place to visit, there were some negatives which might put me off wanting to live there permanently.
Firstly, if you are a club lover, and love the “mental” nights out at Motion or Lakota, Matera does not match up. Although there are some bars, and the Italians I met were very friendly, there isn’t the same sort of drinking culture that exists in Bristol. The typical night out was a pizza with friends on a Friday night, and a couple of beers at the local bar on a Saturday night, and then nothing for the rest of the week. The town square would be deserted after about 9pm on weekdays – hardly Clifton Triangle. The relaxing and more intimate nights out were a nice change from the usual hectic bar-crawling scene back home, but I could also imagine myself getting bored. In fact, many of the students there tended to visit Naples for a fun weekend out.
The novelty of the siesta culture was also something that with time would wear off. During the siesta hours, town life comes to a standstill – everything is put on hold. Shops close everywhere between the hours of one and four in the afternoon, if you urgently need something – you can forget about it until early evening. Matera shuts down. On weekends or when I was not teaching, I found myself hanging about aimlessly. Although I am a queen napper and love finding any excuse to be inactive during the day, it did get boring.
A more surprising problem (from an English perspective) was the issue of flooding. Not being used to rain in Matera, the infrastructure is not quite as prepared for it as Bristol. On one of the first rainy days of the season, the street draining systems failed to cope, and water on the roads was ankle deep! Half of Matera seemed to be in their cars trying to get to work, and due to the narrow roads and the fact that the cars could barely make it through the water- the traffic became unbearable!
Despite the negatives, Matera is a wonderful and very friendly place to visit and the town itself was easy to get around and settle in to. The different nightlife would take some getting used to if I were to live there permanently, but as a tourist town it certainly offers a unique experience.