Are certain horrific aspects of catholicism distinctive to that sect specificaly.

[Lucanus]

My uncle on my fathers side married an Italian, a communist from somewhere near Genua a think. It is from her that I got most stories of the uneducated and conservative South.

Hahahahah, if she's from Genova she is quite biased!

Weir. The press and almoust everything else creates the image of an Italy divided in apoor South with high unemployment and a rich North with well running economy

In these days, there is not much difference, really...

Meaning that it was shit before aswell? And before what?

I was referring to the previous point, sorry if I wasn't clear

Hardly anyone here doesn`t make a holiday once every 3 to 5 years in Italy. But I always thought that the main tourist attractions were in the North. And that everything south of Neapel is nothing but goats, old people, dry lands and chemical waste fills.

Yes I see a lot of you Austrians/Germans down here... Anyway, it's weird you have never heard of Salento (the heel of the boot), it's been gaining a lot of popularity in the last years.

Yeah, Italy is the 8th largest world economy. So is industry from the North finaly starting to move into the South? That could change alot of things there. In Belgium for example the South use to be Industrialised and rich whilest the North was agricultural and poor - then in the 1980s the industry moved to the poor North to profit from the low wages there. Today the South of Belgium is the poor part of the country.

We have reached a certain balance from the '90s onwards.

Is it true that there is a highway being built from Neaple into the region of Calabria that has been under construction since the 1950s and still is no where near to getting finished because mafia involvement with buisnesses and unions keep messing arround with the plans?

I can imagine that regions having problems with organised crime have a hard time creating a working inferstructure and private economy.

Partly true. It *was* completed but they have been "modernizing" it since 1998 because many traits were not really what you would expect from a highway.