Comments:
Dear friends, in Italy the social acceptance of barefooters is not very high nowadays: it's a barefoot-hostile country. Usually, barefooting is associated with marginalization, lunacy, poverty, filthiness or belonging to certain ethnical groups, like the gypsies. Because of this prejudice, even people that would love going barefoot feel ashamed of doing it. The only exceptions to this situation are represented by: 1) extreme left group members during the seventies (in every case no more, and they were labelled as half-freaks, too); 2) quite opposed, pilgrims who walk toward a sanctuary (another special exception could be firewalking or pyrobatics, as a form of drilling that has recently come into fashion in the training of managers for strengthening the character). I myself can walk barefoot only occasionally: otherwise I would be labelled as a very queer person nd the general disapproval would obstruct my job's career. Therefore, one is obliged to walk barefoot mainly home or on the beach. So you can see some tourists in Italy who walk barefoot, especially in clean art cities like Venice and Florence (rarely in Naples, where you run the risk of getting syringes of drug addicts on the asphalt), while Italians prefer to walk barefoot only abroad when they become tourists (but very seldom). Nevertheless, there is a big meeting where these social conventions are put aside and a lot of people decide to set their feet free and to walk barefoot for more than 25 km: it's the big march for peace from Perugia to Assisi. Unfortunately it does not take place every year but every two years or more. This year represents an exception: an extraordinary march took place in May, 16th, in order to solicit the peace process in Kosovo. The next will take place within two months, next September, 26th. In May, thanks to the mild climate of spring's end, hundreds of persons decided to walk barefoot: first only a few people, after a little time many followed by an irresistible process of imitation. Some discovered this feeling for the first time, but hoped to repeat the pleasant experience. I hope that many barefooters will come and join, also to persuade hesitating people to discover the exciting pleasure of walking barefoot: imitation is the best way of advertising for making barefooting spread. For general information about the march (how to arrive to Perugia, etc.), you can look at the Internet site of the march (also in English version), whose address is: http://www.krenet.it/a/mpace/. Best greetings, Temistocle Osvaldo Lo Scalzo replies only to: temistocle_loscalzo@hotmail.com