Ivy: A Scarf for the Trees

Scarves for humans, ivy for trees.

We’ve written about ivy before. In fact, we thought we were done with it. Ivy, after all, seems like one of those topics you either notice once and move on from, or never notice at all. Back in 2020, we wrote in this post asking whether ivy in Italy was a problem or simply part of the scenery. We concluded that felt reasonable at the time: Italians don’t really notice it.

And then, recently, we found ourselves thinking about ivy all over again.

This time it happened on a road trip home. Hours in the car have a way of loosening your grip on useful thought. You start noticing edges. Repetition. Patterns. Things that were there all along but you never really noticed before or perhaps notice on a gray day and you have a slight fever. As we drove south, descending out of the Dolomites, the landscape began to subtly change.

In places like Alta Badia and Val Gardena, everything feels carefully composed. Forests are forests. Meadows are meadows. Trees stand on their own, clearly defined, not competing for attention. There is a sense that nature here has been edited, gently but firmly. If something grows where it shouldn’t, it probably doesn’t stay long and we are good with that.

And then, somewhere along the drive, that clarity dissolves.

There isn’t a sign announcing it. No border marker. But suddenly ivy appears. Not the decorative ivy trained along a wall or framing a window. This is ivy with ambition. Ivy climbing trees along the roadside, wrapping trunks so completely that the tree’s trunk becomes grossly oversized. Ivy spilling over embankments, creeping up poles, threading itself into everything vertical.

By the time we reached Lombardy, the effect was undeniable. Kilometer after kilometer of trees with trunks wearing thick green coats. Once you noticed it, it was impossible not to see it everywhere. 

This wasn’t just a few neglected corners. It felt systemic. Almost intentional, though clearly not planned. (Of course, spaces along roadside are unloved, unowned spaces that tend to be the ones we see the most in a car, but still a lot of ivy is a lot of ivy.)

And that’s where our earlier conclusion about ivy started to feel incomplete.

Saying that Italians “don’t notice” ivy isn’t quite right. They notice plenty. They notice cracks in walls, paving stones missing in front of their house, crooked shutter, if I lost a half a kilo, or that our lights weren't on for two days. They just don’t always experience these things as problems. (Ok, for the last two they may poke fun of me for the weight gain or want to know where the hell were we?) Ivy, we realized, may fall into the don't-care category. It isn’t invisible. It’s simply not alarming.

Sitting in the car, watching tree after tree slide by, it occurred to us that ivy might actually read as something positive. Not wild or dangerous, but comforting. Familiar. And then the metaphor came to us: ivy as a scarf.

A scarf doesn’t fix you. It doesn’t correct a flaw or make you more efficient. It adds warmth and softens lines. It suggests care rather than control. Stay with with us here....ivy does something similar to a tree. It wraps it. It makes the tree look older, more lived-in, less exposed. 

And of course, Italians do like their scarves. Both in the fashion-blog sense, and in the practical, affectionate and warming way. A scarf is something you throw on without much thought, something that signals comfort more than polish. Ivy feels like that. It’s not there to impress. It’s there because it’s allowed to be.

The contrast with the Dolomites becomes sharper in this light. In curated landscapes, ivy feels out of place. It introduces ambiguity. Where does the tree end and the plant begin? Is the tree healthy? Is something being neglected? Will the ivy grow faster than the tree can escape it? Argh! Who will win? Those questions disrupt the clean narrative of “nature as spectacle.”

But along everyday roads, in the working countryside, nature seems less like a performance and more like a negotiation. Ivy stays until it truly causes trouble. It isn’t aggressively removed just because it complicates the view. It’s tolerated, even welcomed, as part of how things coexist.

This tolerance feels very Italian. It echoes other things we’ve noticed over the years. Indirect signs that state rules without pointing fingers. Buildings that age visibly rather than being endlessly refreshed. Situations that remain unresolved but somehow functional. There’s a comfort with overlap and ambiguity, with things sharing space without being fully disentangled.

Ivy embodies that sensibility perfectly. It refuses sharp boundaries. It blurs categories. It makes it harder to say, “This is exactly what this thing is.” And maybe that’s why it doesn’t register as a problem.

From a strictly ecological standpoint, one could argue about trees being “strangled,” about competition for light and nutrients. But the roadside ivy we kept seeing didn’t feel like an emergency waiting to happen. It felt like something that had been there a long time, growing at a pace no one felt compelled to interrupt.

Which brings us back to noticing.

Living in Italy long enough changes what you see. Ivy becomes a kind of visual marker. A signal that you’ve left the brochure version of the country and entered the lived-in one. You start to associate it with certain provinces, certain rhythms, certain kinds of neglect that aren’t really neglect at all.

Once you see ivy this way, it starts showing up everywhere. And not just on trees. You notice it in attitudes, in language, in how problems are allowed to exist without immediate correction. Some things, Italy seems to suggest, don’t need fixing. They need living with.

So yes, maybe Italians don’t notice ivy in the way an outsider might. Or maybe they notice it and simply read it differently. Not as a warning sign, but as atmosphere. Not as disorder, but as comfort. A scarf for the trees, pulled on without much fuss, doing its quiet work of softening the landscape as it passes by.

Sometimes we really wonder if ivy really is the superglue that holds Italy together.

A Field Guide to Italian Hotel Noises

Notes from a Noise‑Sensitive Traveler in the Dolomites


 

Left: The Gasthaus Sonzalaut (fictional) has lots of sounds in store for you! Right: Two hollow bricks (laterizi forati) broadcasting noise.

There is a particular kind of promise you hear at hotel check‑in across Italy, a promise delivered with the serene confidence of someone who has never once been woken by a midnight flush. "Tranquillità assoluta," they say, sliding the keycard across the counter. "Very quiet. No parties. No traffic. You'll sleep wonderfully."

And you want to believe them. You really do. Especially after a long day of alpine switchbacks, legs humming, lungs full of pine‑scented air, and the kind of wholesome exhaustion that should lead directly to deep, restorative sleep.

But then you enter the room, admire the carved wood trim, the tasteful textiles, the view of the Dolomites glowing pink in the evening light and you forget, briefly, that Italian buildings have a secret. A structural paradox. A national acoustic personality.

These buildings look like fortresses, but they sound like megaphones.

This guide is for those of us who hear everything — the noise‑adverse, the sensitive, the ones who can identify a toilet flush by floor and approximate pipe diameter. It is a taxonomy of the creatures that inhabit the interior soundscape of even the nicest Italian hotels, especially those built with the ubiquitous laterizi forati — hollow clay bricks prized for thermal efficiency and seismic friendliness, but acoustically about as private as a confession shouted into a rain gutter.

A recent stay in Arabba, Italy for a ski vacation confirmed our field notes and pushed us to publish to other noise naturalists. We stayed in room 202.

Let's begin.

1. The Alpine Flush (Toiletus alpinis)

Signature call: A sudden, cascading roar that begins faintly and ends intimately.

The Alpine Flush is the first species you will encounter, often within minutes of settling into your room. It travels vertically through the building's plumbing shafts, which are typically lined with hollow bricks that behave like resonant chambers. The result is a sound that begins three floors above you and ends as if someone has emptied a bucket directly into your pillow.

For the noise‑sensitive listener, the Alpine Flush is a reminder that your sleep is not your own. It belongs to the collective. It belongs to the group hours.

2. The Stairwell Stomper (Homo escalante)

Signature call: A rhythmic thudding, punctuated by boot squeaks and occasional sighs of exertion.

Concrete stairwells in Italian hotels are built with admirable structural integrity and absolutely no acoustic dampening. They function as vertical amphitheaters, broadcasting every footstep with the clarity of a percussion solo.

The Stomper is most active in the early morning, often around 6:45, when the first wave of hikers or skiers descends for breakfast. Sensitive listeners will note the Doppler effect as the sound approaches, peaks, and recedes — a sonic topography as predictable as sunrise.

3. The Cupboard Slammer (Armadius impetuosi)

Signature call: A sharp, resonant WHAM that reverberates through shared walls.

Cupboards in Italian hotels are often built into the wall — a charming design choice that unfortunately turns them into acoustic transmitters. When your neighbor closes their wardrobe, the sound travels through the laterizi forati with the enthusiasm of a cymbal crash.

For the noise‑adverse, the Cupboard Slammer is a test of the nervous system. You may find yourself bracing for the next impact, like a seismologist anticipating aftershocks. So relaxing, right?

4. The Corridor Conversationalist (Vocalis corridori)

Signature call: Whispered dialogue that somehow registers at full volume.

Corridors in Alpine hotels are often echo‑friendly. The Conversationalist moves slowly, narrating their life in what they believe is a whisper. Sensitive listeners know better. These whispers bounce, multiply, and slip under your door like curious spirits.

This species is particularly dangerous because it often appears during the sacred window between 10 PM and 11 PM — the hour when the building's internal noise is supposed to be winding down. Their presence signals that group hours have not yet begun.

5. The Chair Drag (Scrapius mobilis)

Signature call: A prolonged scraping howl, reminiscent of a distressed sea creature.

Tile floors and other hard surfaces (easy to clean!) are a staple of Italian hospitality, especially in the mountains. Felt pads are not. The result is a sound that begins next to, above you, or below you and travels through the concrete structure with surprising fidelity.

For the noise‑sensitive traveler, the Chair Drag is a reminder that every moment of your stay is a sonic event about to happen. You will hear every repositioned chair, every enthusiastic scoot, every child who decides to push their seat back with the full force of their body weight.

6. The Group Hours Phenomenon (Circadian communalis)

Signature call: Blessed silence, but only when everyone else has surrendered to sleep.

This is the most mysterious and powerful force in the Italian hotel ecosystem. It is not a creature but a collective behavior. When the last cupboard slams, the final flush echoes, and the final corridor whisper fades, the building enters a state of temporary peace. Maybe, just maybe between 11 pm and 6 am if you are lucky.

Sensitive listeners experience this as a kind of truce — a fragile, communal agreement that lasts until the first early riser breaks it with a decisive stomp.

7. The Rifugio Chorus (Snorus communalis)

Signature call: A polyphonic blend of snoring, zippering, rustling, and headlamp clicks.

In a rifugio (very high in the mountains as in you had to walk there), noise is expected. It is part of the social contract. You sleep in a room with twenty strangers, and you accept that you will hear every breath, every rustle, every midnight bathroom trip.

For the noise‑sensitive traveler, the irony is sharp: the rifugio, with all its communal chaos, feels more honest than the luxury hotel. At least it doesn't pretend.

8. The Heavy‑Footed Wanderer (Pedestris plumbeus)

Signature call: A slow, ponderous thudding that suggests the presence of ankle weights, lead‑lined slippers, or a personal gravitational field.

Certainly the most anger, scorn and lost hours are dedicated to this: a creature with particular kind of footstep that defies physics. You hear it from your room — a rhythmic, seismic thump that seems impossible for a human body to produce. You imagine a linebacker. A mountaineer wearing crampons indoors. A person who has replaced their tibias with rebar.

But no. It is always a perfectly ordinary guest, walking with the density of a neutron star.

The Heavy‑Footed Wanderer is most active during the liminal hours: the moment you lie down, the moment you begin to drift, the moment you think, finally, the building is quiet. That is when the thudding begins. Back and forth. Back and forth. A migration pattern known only to them.

Sensitive listeners experience this as a kind of existential riddle. How many times must one cross a hotel room in a single evening? Is it good for their bones? Are they pacing? Practicing? Searching for something? Or is this simply their natural gait? A personal geology expressed through movement?

The tragedy is that the building amplifies every step. Concrete slabs transmit impact noise with the enthusiasm of a drumhead. Each footfall becomes a small tectonic event, a reminder that you are living inside someone else's choreography.

For the noise‑adverse traveler, the Heavy‑Footed Wanderer could be be perceived as oblivious but certainly not as malicious. They are simply unaware that their footsteps are being broadcast live into your consciousness. But awareness does not soften the impact. You lie there, counting the steps, mapping the room, imagining the path they are tracing. You create a private cartography of someone else's restlessness.

9. The Architectural Paradox (Structura paradossa)

Signature call: Silence outside, cacophony inside.

Italian hotels, especially in the Alps, are built with materials that prioritize warmth, speed of construction, and seismic safety. Chief among them are (likely) laterizi forati, hollow clay bricks prized for their thermal insulation and structural flexibility. But acoustically, they behave like perforated drums. Concrete frames amplify impact noise, and the brick cavities carry sound with startling clarity.

The word laterizi comes from Latin latericius, meaning "made of bricks," and forati means "perforated." These bricks are everywhere in Italy, from Milanese apartment blocks to alpine lodgings. They're warm, practical, and structurally sound. But for the noise-sensitive traveler, they're a paradox: a wall that keeps out the cold but lets in the neighbor's midnight pacing.

We've noticed that Italians are sensitive to cold, so perhaps warmth matters more than silence in construction? Or a whole generation of Italians have grown up with these as "normal" sounds of a hotel?

For the noise‑adverse traveler, this paradox becomes a kind of existential riddle: How can a building look so solid and sound so porous?

A laterizio forato - happily passing along sound.

Closing Notes for the Sensitive Listener

If you are noise‑adverse, traveling in Italy requires a certain philosophical flexibility. You learn to accept that silence is not a given but a communal achievement. You learn that "quiet" means "no external noise," not "no internal noise." You learn that the architecture is warm, charming, and deeply human but that humanity is loud.

But you also learn to laugh about it. To observe the acoustic fauna with the curiosity of a naturalist and the resignation of someone who knows they will be awake at 6:45 when the first boots hit the stairs. And in the end, perhaps that is the true Travelmarx lesson: Noise is part of the story, and the sensitive listener hears the whole thing.

And yes, don't forget your best noise-cancelling headphones.

We've written about noise on and off in the years – I guess you can say we are noise cranks – and this won't be the last time we are writing on noise. Some past posts:

• The Noise on the Walls: Urban Static
• You Know It When You Hear It
• Noise and Nuisance; Bronzino to Babbage
• Schopenhauer, On Noise