After nearly two years of owning my car, I just now looked into why I can’t legally drive into central Reggio. As of January 1, 2007, only cars classified as “Euro 4” can enter the city. This is all an attempt to cut down on the level of smog that accumulates, especially in the winter from everyone lighting up their stoves. Since they can’t kick those people out, they kick out everyone whose car was made before 2005, or when the Euro 4 regulation went into effect.

There are six “Euro” stages, starting with Euro 1 created in 1993 and ending sometime in the next decade with a proposed Euro 6 that will force everyone to stand still to avoid exhaling too much. Each level forces car makers to decrease the level of noxious fumes and particulate matter that their cars spew into the atmosphere. My car is a Euro 1 so I am ostracized from the center of Reggio.

In all honesty, my car is not in all that bad a shape for being 12 years old. I mean it gets me to where I want to go, has power windows and locks, and stops when I asked it to, but it’s a car best kept on the mountain roads where you have to drive so slowly anyway that a wreck might ding up the paint a little. I did have a fearless moment a little over a year ago when I took the autostrada to Milano to buy my piano. It’s not something I would do again by choice as a car like that in a crash on the autostrada would crush so badly it would blink out of existence.