But how can one go on talking about crisis and flamboyant inflation when hotels, villages, ferries and resorts are always crowded? A reflection that arises spontaneously, also in the wake of the famous assessments of a well-known Milanese politician, now on the verge of beatification, who in his time questioned the existence of liquidity problems in Italic pockets by referring precisely to the crowding that could be recorded in restaurants.
And indeed, it is often difficult to reconcile economic analyses, statistics, indicators of more or less widespread well-being with the prices of certain trips and many summer accommodations. And when you sit down to eat a pizza in a small coastal town in Apulia and discover that the austere place with plastic tables and chairs offers pizzas for 18 euros, you cannot help but ask yourself a few questions and silent questions, while waiting for the precious leavened dough to arrive.
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Despite the fact that economic indicators measure price rises in all sectors, from food to energy, from petrol to transport, we have in fact reached that time of year when we usually concern ourselves with tariffs “of pleasure”: those of holidays, flights, ferries and resorts. And while it is true that even the penniless go to heaven, the intersection of holidays, more or less compulsory, the dynamics of life, the weather and the alternation of high and low season do not always coincide satisfactorily.
And this brings with it a bitter as well as complex difficulty of choice: to settle for the more realistic solution, the budget-friendly holiday, or to let oneself be carried away by dreams, by the need to escape and by the desire, at least for ten days a year, to enjoy oneself, have fun, live as if it were not tomorrow? Another dilemma, almost a trilemma, not easy to solve. Because as long as you are at home or in the car, drawing up mental balance sheets, you convince yourself that the first path is the more responsible and realistic one, to avoid having to chase your credit card statement for months afterwards. But then, inadvertently, you find yourself passing in front of the window of a travel agency (yes, they still exist, in spite of Ai and the metaverse) and your eye falls on those damned, tempting photographs, those immaculate, deserted beaches, those oceans of almost unnatural colours. Not resisting curiosity and self-doubt, you stop and discover that for only €3,465 per person you can treat yourself to a definitely memorable holiday in Polynesia, wherever this magical place is exactly.
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Living above one's means - in the absence of collateral criminal activity - is a fine and fulfilling art. Even more so is travelling beyond one's means. And this is well known to all those who, passing in front of dream showcases, give in to temptation and decide that it is worth taking out a loan and damning the remaining 51 weeks in order to spend one in a place that can cancel out all signs of impending burn-out.
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The eternal choice between Pinocchio and the grasshopper... no Pinocchio and the cricket... better still, between the ant and the grasshopper thus leads many countrymen to add an imaginary zero to the bottom of their monthly income and generate debt to go on holiday. With the aggravating factor of not being able to issue BOTs and BTPs to recover liquidity and that, in high season, even a stay on the Tuscan coast may require exposure that current loan rates would certainly discourage.
Illustration by Gloria Dozio - Acrimònia Studios
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