I feel your pain and I hope you were able to flee successfully! I made the mistake of moving to Sicily several years ago. During my initial visits, I was blinded by the natural beauty of the place and its rich history. But as is always the case, visiting a place is very different from living in it. Three years on, we're getting the fuck out of here for a lot of the reasons you talked about in your post. Yes, I can confirm that by and large, Sicilians are ignorant, inbred (lots of cousin on cousin marriages here), close minded beyond belief and an envious, duplicitous people. Yes, here and there you might be lucky enough to befriend a genuine, decent Sicilian, but be very wary of most of these people - and you must be especially wary of the Sicilian that approaches you with a smile - from my experiences that "friendliness" is usually a disarming tactic to set you up for a fucking, whether that be by sneaking a few rotten onions into your produce bag or charging you a ridiculous price to work on your house, and then cheating you out of materials and quality on top of that or getting some kind of favor out of you. God forbid if your wife or girlfriend is not Sicilian - if she's not, she will be leered at and grossly propositioned on the street, topped off by Sicilian women giving her absolutely filthy looks - on a regular basis. As a foreigner you will NEVER be accepted in Sicily. I am 100% Italian American, look Italian and having come from a traditional Italian American family I'm well versed in Italian culture, the good, the bad and the ugliness of it. But none of that matters here  - if you weren't born in Sicily, you will always be an outsider there; viewed with deep suspicion, glared at and stared at as if you were nothing but a piece of shit. These are not nice people for the most part, but they are insanely rude, boisterously loud, ignorant and superstitious beyond belief, congenitally stupid, and utterly unaccepting of anyone or anything different from what they're used to. These traits are reflected in the shambles that are their buildings, roads, universities and bureaucracies, (which are a total fucking nightmare to deal with.) And these things are a perfect reflection of how most Sicilians, (the very old folks excepted), look - the vast majority of them are fat and bloated; men, from young to old, generally have inner tubes and potbellies, usually accentuated by tight shirts and pants and mommy shoveling endless plates of food on them (Look up "Mammoni" and take that fucked up trip, which has destroyed most of the men here.) The women are generally fucking repulsive; sloppily and ridiculously dressed (lots of asinine tops with glitter and rhinestones - as tacky as can be) most sporting huge, flabby butts and inner tubes highlighted by skin tight clothes. They're just gross. And they are mostly mean, petty, envious and jealous of each other beyond belief. The "lovely" Sicilian countryside is defiled with tons of litter- these folks toss trash everywhere; the streets are filthy and the roadsides filled with plastic water bottles and the occasional mega-pile of household trash. Sicilians have no respect for their island's natural treasures. But O Dio!!! when a plaster statue of a saint comes parading up the street, they'll bow, genuflect and paste money on it. But when it comes to how they treat each other, it's all about gaining advantage and fucking the other person before he fucks you. I could go on and on but I'll leave you with two things: My grandmother was from Sicily. She was mean, jealous of everyone, rude, ignorant and loud. Now I understand why. Secondly, until recently, I would sometimes invite local folks over for sumptuous dinners and fun parties. I wanted to develop friendships here and start integrating and I thought that would be a nice way to do that. But then I noticed something: Though I had invited many people over, multiple times, just one of them ever invited me over to their house. There's a Sicilian saying; steeped in fear and ignorance that explains that well: "Never invite a stranger into your house." And there's another saying that really explains why, by and large, Sicily is a depressing, sexist, racist, unfriendly dead end; rife with corruption, sloth and incompetence: "Never let your children become more educated than you are."

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NAML