"Voglio la mamma..." whines my little charge.
I hand her a pebble, which, miraculously, distracts her. The three-year-old brain is a marvelous thing. She flings it over her shoulder, narrowly missing my head, and runs for the swings. I pray that she won't fall down.
"Spingimi forte!" she commands (push me fast). I push her gently.
"Forte, t'ho detto!" (I told you fast!) I push her a fraction harder. Having spent a total of three hours with her so far, I bet you she'd get all excited and forget to hold on if I pushed her any faster. I tell her that this is as fast I as I can make her go, and that only daddies can make the swing go any higher.
"You're not very strong," she comments. Yes, well... But she has already moved onto a new idea before I even finish my mental grumbling. "Look! A pigeon! Let's catch it and and tie it up and put it in the stroller and trick it into coming home with us and then nonna will put it in the pot and I'll put some salt and pepper on it because that's my job e lo MANGIAMO!!"
She flings her arms out in excitement and I grab her off the swing before she can go flying into the gravel (knew it! it is a small and rather worthless victory). I put her down and let her chase the pigeon for a few minutes.
"You catch him," she orders a few minutes later. I consider how ridiculous that would look and wonder if the amusement she would get out of it would be worth it. The pigeon runs out of the shade and into the sun. I'll pass. I explain to her that I don't know how to run. She informs me that grown-ups aren't very good at playing. (Yeah, well, you weren't complaining when I hauled your heavy little arse the whole way to the playground on my hip because *somebody* was too tired to walk.)
"At least you can push me on the swing. Push me again. Fast." The sun has moved and the swings are no longer in the shade. I glance at my phone. Forty-five more minutes until her mother returns from what she calls work (I don't know what it is that she actually accomplishes, given that she calls me approximately three times per hour).
"Push harder!" I comply and start to count while sweat dribbles down my back.
One mississippi... two mississippi...
I have counted to 60 mississippi three times when the kid's grandmother shows up and starts telling me what she has prepared for lunch. This takes five minutes. She tells me about her health problems... her husband's health problems... her son's cough (contracted because he had the air-conditioning on in his car and his throat was exposed)... she moves on to more general topics: how children grow up and move away from you, and even if you set them up in houses that are within walking distance of yours, it's just not as easy to keep an eye on them as when they live in your own home.
By the time her daughter (the kid's mother) arrives, she is telling me that we really should take the child off the swings because so much movement before eating is going to upset her digestion (what, like, retroactively?), and also a sliver of her pancia (tummy) is exposed to the wind from the swinging and that is just no good at all. I smile feebly at the mother, still trying to decide whether I most feel like laughing or like collapsing in a heap of sweat and boredom.
"Ciao!" I wave cheerfully a few moments later. On my way home, I pick up some gnocco, noting that I have turned into an Italian twelve-year-old with my snacking habits, and some gelato. I shower off the sweat-and-playground-dust combination and plunk myself down in a chair with my lunch and a book.
What's funny is that six months from now, I bet you I will totally be looking back on this fondly: oh, man, self, remember when you used to have gelato for lunch and read all afternoon and the most stressful part of your day was pushing a little kid (who, alla fine, despite being mildly snotty, did have some hilarious little-kid speech peculiarities) on the swings and coming up with potential conversation topics for your shy elementary student? Those were the days...
In the meantime, I really do need to get some actual (non-childcare-related) work done and it really is a bit toasty and despite my glorious post-playground shower and a lot of splashing-water-on-the-face and having the fan sitting a mere two feet away from me and the fact that I'm not moving except to type, I find myself feeling a bit fuzzy and melty. I think I will go shelter nella Panizzi. (The local library. They must have air-conditioning there, right?)
Wednesday, July 22
Monday, July 20
L'omino bianco
I am wandering through the Standa, the supermarket that lives under the Oviesse on Via Roma, absently sticking a packet of "mix grattugiato" (delicious grated cheese) into the crook of my elbow and vaguely wishing I had remembered to grab one of those cool basket/carts when I see a swatch of familiar light blue in the distance. (Yeah, okay, it's about a meter away, but it sounded more dramatic the other way.) I turn my head to investigate.
Yess! I think to myself. It is a pile of laundry detergent, with some kind of 2-for-1 deal.
Specifically, it is Omino Bianco laundry detergent. The blue kind (I think the flavor is actually called muschio bianco, which I don't really get - is muschio musk? Because it doesn't really smell like what I thought that would smell like. The picture looks like muguet - which I think is called lily of the valley in English - but then other brands have scents called mughetto, and presumbly that is the Italian equivalent to muguet. Or maybe musk and muguet are synonyms? Boh). Anyway. It is my favorite laundry detergent here in Italy (well, ever, actually) and it was quite the lucky discovery.
In my first apartment here, I was only living there for a week with one of the other teachers and we decided it wasn't worth it to figure out how the washer worked (for some reason the instructions were only in French and German, and I didn't want to be responsible for deciphering them). So we handwashed our stuff. With fabric softener. Because we bought that by mistake. It smelled nice, though, and had a cuddly bear on the front.
In the second apartment, the one with the crazy man, the washer was located in the (dubiously clean) kitchen and smelled like mold. I elected not to use it, which meant dragging all my stuff to a nearby (sort of) washing machine place (the actual name will come to me... someday), stuffing them all in the same machine (because I was poor at the time), having them not dry as a consequence, and thus having drying clothes draped damply around my room for the next two days. Yum. The other unfortunate thing about that particular adventure was that I zipped into Acqua e Sapone (an excellent store) to grab some detergent on my way and it was right before closing time and I was so excited about having successfully found the place again and I was poor, remember, so I just grabbed the first cheap-ish bottle of stuff with flowers on the front that I saw and that was that. I figured the word on the label - candeggina - was probably the brand or something.
Yeah, no. Candeggina is bleach. Flower-scented bleach, in this particular case, but bleach nonetheless. Oh, and the third unfortunate thing about the washing machine place adventure was that it was relatively close to the train station (sketchy part of town) and this Egyptian guy showed up and I was dumb enough to answer his what's your name/where are you from questions and then he wanted to talk the whole time my laundry was going. Sigh.
So that one evening a couple of weeks later when I had moved into the Good Apartment (finally) and was strolling around Esselunga and picked up a bottle of blue Omino Bianco laundry detergent and successfully did my laundry and my room smelled delightfully of flowers... it was nice. Finally. So the "little white man" (who, parenthetically, is actually a little black stick figure man wearing a white t-shirt) always reminds me of that feeling of yesss! My clothes are clean and I own a drying rack and my room smells good and I didn't blow up the washer and I don't live with the creepy man any more!
Back to Standa. The trick about the blue Omino Bianco stuff is that no one ever has it. They often have the green one (aloe, or something) and the white one (savon de Marseille), but not the blue one. It is elusive. You have to check the detergent aisle in every supermarket every time you go in order to have a steady supply. And even then... so this is a good deal. I must buy some. I have been using some other stuff that the housemates bought (it smells like roses, which is nice too, but just not the same) but now I have found Omino Bianco. Huzzah! (Yeah, it's the little things in life, right?)
I turn around with my mix grattugiato and my bread and whatever else and scurry back to get a basket/cart. I haul my prize home. I do some laundry and my room smells half like muschio bianco (whatever it is) and half like the summery smell of sun on the cobblestones... or sun on something, anyway (it's very sunny here right now). I am happy.
The only thing is... now that I have managed to bring home not one, but two (!!) bottles of the stuff, it occurs to me that I am only here for another two and a half weeks. That's probably not even long enough to use up two whole bottles of it. I am sad.
Yess! I think to myself. It is a pile of laundry detergent, with some kind of 2-for-1 deal.
Specifically, it is Omino Bianco laundry detergent. The blue kind (I think the flavor is actually called muschio bianco, which I don't really get - is muschio musk? Because it doesn't really smell like what I thought that would smell like. The picture looks like muguet - which I think is called lily of the valley in English - but then other brands have scents called mughetto, and presumbly that is the Italian equivalent to muguet. Or maybe musk and muguet are synonyms? Boh). Anyway. It is my favorite laundry detergent here in Italy (well, ever, actually) and it was quite the lucky discovery.
In my first apartment here, I was only living there for a week with one of the other teachers and we decided it wasn't worth it to figure out how the washer worked (for some reason the instructions were only in French and German, and I didn't want to be responsible for deciphering them). So we handwashed our stuff. With fabric softener. Because we bought that by mistake. It smelled nice, though, and had a cuddly bear on the front.
In the second apartment, the one with the crazy man, the washer was located in the (dubiously clean) kitchen and smelled like mold. I elected not to use it, which meant dragging all my stuff to a nearby (sort of) washing machine place (the actual name will come to me... someday), stuffing them all in the same machine (because I was poor at the time), having them not dry as a consequence, and thus having drying clothes draped damply around my room for the next two days. Yum. The other unfortunate thing about that particular adventure was that I zipped into Acqua e Sapone (an excellent store) to grab some detergent on my way and it was right before closing time and I was so excited about having successfully found the place again and I was poor, remember, so I just grabbed the first cheap-ish bottle of stuff with flowers on the front that I saw and that was that. I figured the word on the label - candeggina - was probably the brand or something.
Yeah, no. Candeggina is bleach. Flower-scented bleach, in this particular case, but bleach nonetheless. Oh, and the third unfortunate thing about the washing machine place adventure was that it was relatively close to the train station (sketchy part of town) and this Egyptian guy showed up and I was dumb enough to answer his what's your name/where are you from questions and then he wanted to talk the whole time my laundry was going. Sigh.
So that one evening a couple of weeks later when I had moved into the Good Apartment (finally) and was strolling around Esselunga and picked up a bottle of blue Omino Bianco laundry detergent and successfully did my laundry and my room smelled delightfully of flowers... it was nice. Finally. So the "little white man" (who, parenthetically, is actually a little black stick figure man wearing a white t-shirt) always reminds me of that feeling of yesss! My clothes are clean and I own a drying rack and my room smells good and I didn't blow up the washer and I don't live with the creepy man any more!
Back to Standa. The trick about the blue Omino Bianco stuff is that no one ever has it. They often have the green one (aloe, or something) and the white one (savon de Marseille), but not the blue one. It is elusive. You have to check the detergent aisle in every supermarket every time you go in order to have a steady supply. And even then... so this is a good deal. I must buy some. I have been using some other stuff that the housemates bought (it smells like roses, which is nice too, but just not the same) but now I have found Omino Bianco. Huzzah! (Yeah, it's the little things in life, right?)
I turn around with my mix grattugiato and my bread and whatever else and scurry back to get a basket/cart. I haul my prize home. I do some laundry and my room smells half like muschio bianco (whatever it is) and half like the summery smell of sun on the cobblestones... or sun on something, anyway (it's very sunny here right now). I am happy.
The only thing is... now that I have managed to bring home not one, but two (!!) bottles of the stuff, it occurs to me that I am only here for another two and a half weeks. That's probably not even long enough to use up two whole bottles of it. I am sad.
Wednesday, July 15
Noontime in Reggio
Sometimes I don't have work until late in the evening, so I like to sleep late (until someone starts chucking bottles in the glass recycling thing), lie in bed for a while wondering how many bottles the guy can possibly have, and then go for a walk around Reggio. Right now it's very hot, so it's a short walk: down to Oviesse to stock up on water (pain in the arse but necessary chore), and back to the piazza to absorb the culture, take a moment to look at the duomo and get teary about having to leave (for some reason the sight of the duomo over the roof of the vescovado makes me exceptionally emotional), and get some erbazzone to comfort myself. (Yay, emotional eating! So healthy!)
On some days, the erbazzone at Melli (local panificio - bakery) is fresh, hot, and crunchy. Especially if they give you a piece from the side: the side pieces have more crunchiness and a thinner layer of spinach-y stuff, thus giving you the optimal ratio of crunchy part to spinach-y part. It pretty much all depends on when you go - you have to go when they have taken a fresh batch out of the oven, before it has cooled, but after they have finished the last batch. I have not yet discerned the precise pattern of how often they take out a new batch, though. I fear that my time in Reggio will come to an end before I solve that particular mystery. Or if you're good friends with the people there, they just give you some of the new batch anyway.
I'm not good friends with the people there. Probably because I've only been going there for about a month, rather than a decade, like most of the clients (I'm guessing). This is because a) I haven't lived here a decade and b) I was scared to go in there for a really long time because I wasn't sure how one ordered things, or what they were called. It gets kind of awkward when you're like "I want a piece of bread" and they're like "what kind?" and you're like "um... the round kind? I dunno... any kind, really... you pick!" and they raise their eyebrows at you.
The eyebrow raise is killer. Actually, I live in fear of getting the eyebrow raise every time they ask how much I want of the erbazzone/gnocco/crostata/anything-else-that-comes-in-large-trays. Some of them are nice (or just want to sell their stuff) and they place their knife such that you stand to get an enormous piece of whatever you're buying. Then you can experience the satisfaction of a demure "un po' meno, per favore". Very ladylike. Excellent.
Others are a bit stingy, which I don't really get, because hello, how about you worry about selling your product and I'll worry about my weight, okay? and they offer you a midgy little piece and (internally) you're like "aww, hell, lady, I've been running around after six-year-olds all day and I haven't eaten since those stale crackers for breakfast" but because you're a proper repressed girl (men, you have it *so* much easier) what you actually say is "si, va bene, grazie," and try not to sigh regretfully. At least this way you don't get the eyebrow raise, though.
Actually, what's even riskier in terms of eyebrow raise potential is when you get there around 7:25pm (they close at 7:30) and you've just come from a long day at work (see reference to six-year-olds) and you don't plan to put any effort into making dinner so what you really want to do is buy both a piece of erbazzone or gnocco (main course) and a piece of crostata or torta di riso (dessert!) and sit down in your chair (yeah, I don't own a table) and that way the most challenging thing you have to worry about is how to avoid getting crumbs down the front of your shirt. I did that once and got a very disdainful look from the lady, though, so that was the end of that. This can be remedied by visiting two of the branches of Melli separately and buying one thing at each, but that takes more effort and also just makes me feel ridiculously pathetic. So instead I just buy my usual piece of erbazzone and try to remember whether or not I still have any nutella that I can just eat out of the jar for dessert.
Yeah. We Americans are kind of gross. It's the food-related female guilt complex, though, I'm telling you. Otherwise I could just wander over to the gelateria and have a granita (practically calorie-free, I bet - it's just ice and syrup, right?) and stroll around with it, trying not to get hit on by those weirdos in the piazza. As it is, though, I am a girl and so I will never go to the gelateria unless I am either desperate or in a group of friends (that's okay because it's social eating - permissible). Anyway. Both the gelateria and the weirdos in the piazza are a story for another day, so I'll leave you with that incredibly un-enlightening thought...
On some days, the erbazzone at Melli (local panificio - bakery) is fresh, hot, and crunchy. Especially if they give you a piece from the side: the side pieces have more crunchiness and a thinner layer of spinach-y stuff, thus giving you the optimal ratio of crunchy part to spinach-y part. It pretty much all depends on when you go - you have to go when they have taken a fresh batch out of the oven, before it has cooled, but after they have finished the last batch. I have not yet discerned the precise pattern of how often they take out a new batch, though. I fear that my time in Reggio will come to an end before I solve that particular mystery. Or if you're good friends with the people there, they just give you some of the new batch anyway.
I'm not good friends with the people there. Probably because I've only been going there for about a month, rather than a decade, like most of the clients (I'm guessing). This is because a) I haven't lived here a decade and b) I was scared to go in there for a really long time because I wasn't sure how one ordered things, or what they were called. It gets kind of awkward when you're like "I want a piece of bread" and they're like "what kind?" and you're like "um... the round kind? I dunno... any kind, really... you pick!" and they raise their eyebrows at you.
The eyebrow raise is killer. Actually, I live in fear of getting the eyebrow raise every time they ask how much I want of the erbazzone/gnocco/crostata/anything-else-that-comes-in-large-trays. Some of them are nice (or just want to sell their stuff) and they place their knife such that you stand to get an enormous piece of whatever you're buying. Then you can experience the satisfaction of a demure "un po' meno, per favore". Very ladylike. Excellent.
Others are a bit stingy, which I don't really get, because hello, how about you worry about selling your product and I'll worry about my weight, okay? and they offer you a midgy little piece and (internally) you're like "aww, hell, lady, I've been running around after six-year-olds all day and I haven't eaten since those stale crackers for breakfast" but because you're a proper repressed girl (men, you have it *so* much easier) what you actually say is "si, va bene, grazie," and try not to sigh regretfully. At least this way you don't get the eyebrow raise, though.
Actually, what's even riskier in terms of eyebrow raise potential is when you get there around 7:25pm (they close at 7:30) and you've just come from a long day at work (see reference to six-year-olds) and you don't plan to put any effort into making dinner so what you really want to do is buy both a piece of erbazzone or gnocco (main course) and a piece of crostata or torta di riso (dessert!) and sit down in your chair (yeah, I don't own a table) and that way the most challenging thing you have to worry about is how to avoid getting crumbs down the front of your shirt. I did that once and got a very disdainful look from the lady, though, so that was the end of that. This can be remedied by visiting two of the branches of Melli separately and buying one thing at each, but that takes more effort and also just makes me feel ridiculously pathetic. So instead I just buy my usual piece of erbazzone and try to remember whether or not I still have any nutella that I can just eat out of the jar for dessert.
Yeah. We Americans are kind of gross. It's the food-related female guilt complex, though, I'm telling you. Otherwise I could just wander over to the gelateria and have a granita (practically calorie-free, I bet - it's just ice and syrup, right?) and stroll around with it, trying not to get hit on by those weirdos in the piazza. As it is, though, I am a girl and so I will never go to the gelateria unless I am either desperate or in a group of friends (that's okay because it's social eating - permissible). Anyway. Both the gelateria and the weirdos in the piazza are a story for another day, so I'll leave you with that incredibly un-enlightening thought...
Tuesday, July 14
Christmas in July
I sit on the floor with my legs curled under me, carefully lining little foam magnet tiles up with a pattern sheet on a magnetic board. I am babysitting my boss' daughter and we are making a magnetic mosaic of a fish, using the pattern to cheat a little (it's like magnetic color by number). She is half American and half Italian, and has apparently just discovered a passion for Christmas music (American) and so "Have yourself a merry little Christmas" drifts in and out of my consciousness.
She knows all the words to the chipmunk song. It's pretty cute, and actually very soothing - childhood favorites while attaching bits of colored foam to a black board. It only gets a little iffy when we're listening to the "Santa baby" song, where some woman is using her sexy voice to ask Santa for a yacht, a million dollars and other related things, and the kid goes "who's the woman in the song?" I hesitate, "umm... probably she's friends with Santa". The kid thinks for a moment. "Oh. I thought she was Santa's mom." I wonder where she got the impression that that is the voice that mothers use to speak to their children. I'm momentarily glad that she doesn't have any brothers, and therefore can't have gotten it from her own family.
Oh, and P.S.: speaking of patriotism (ish) happy 14 juillet to la Francia! I once taught the little French student the chorus to the Marseillaise (by her request, actually)... I dedicate that effort to you, fellow frogs.
She knows all the words to the chipmunk song. It's pretty cute, and actually very soothing - childhood favorites while attaching bits of colored foam to a black board. It only gets a little iffy when we're listening to the "Santa baby" song, where some woman is using her sexy voice to ask Santa for a yacht, a million dollars and other related things, and the kid goes "who's the woman in the song?" I hesitate, "umm... probably she's friends with Santa". The kid thinks for a moment. "Oh. I thought she was Santa's mom." I wonder where she got the impression that that is the voice that mothers use to speak to their children. I'm momentarily glad that she doesn't have any brothers, and therefore can't have gotten it from her own family.
Oh, and P.S.: speaking of patriotism (ish) happy 14 juillet to la Francia! I once taught the little French student the chorus to the Marseillaise (by her request, actually)... I dedicate that effort to you, fellow frogs.
Monday, July 13
Rental car
"Do you think we should rent a car when we come see you?" my mother asks, "so we can visit some of the sights around the beach?" I think for a moment. I picture my mother's frustration level rising meteorically as she hesitates and misses the exit on a highway. I picture the speed of the autostrada. I picture the forehead-vein-pulsing moods she gets in when she is in a town with one-way streets and she doesn't know how to find her destination. (Her forehead vein doesn't actually pulse, but it would if we were characters in a movie.) I picture my brother doing his angry sigh when he learns that we will not be relaxing on the beach, but trekking through medieval villages in the hot sun instead. The poor kid only has three or four days of potential beach vacation.
"Nah," I tell her. "It'll be less stressful if we just take the train. And a lot cheaper."
This turns out to have been a bad idea. Because we are going to Viareggio and the trip is planned for a date just a few days after the explosion. Sigh.
In fairness to trenitalia, the trip there is not that bad. Cheap regionale the whole way, change trains at Parma and Vezzano Ligure (we experience a moment of panic when my mother decides to follow our progress on a map and discovers that there is a Vezzano up near Udine), get off at Forte dei Marmi and take a free bus to Viareggio. We even get to see the very cool marble quarry storage yard things as we pass Carrara.
In Viareggio, things are sad. There are black ribbons on the flags, the trees near the train station are crisped, you can see blackened shells of buildings. "Sono stati carbonizzati," the taxi driver comments to me, on the subject of the victims. It is a throat-lump moment.
Despite that, the sea is lovely (my students are right, of course, and the water on this side is much better than on the Rimini side) and the seafood is lovely and spending time with the family is lovely.
On the way back, Trenitalia redeems itself for all of the organization and stress-free trips that I have experienced since being in Italy.
"No, the station is open today," the hotel person tells me, "you can just get the regular train home." We take a cab to the train station. I look at the departures board and find that "open" is not the same as "actually having trains going through it".
"You can take a bus to Lucca," the biglietteria lady tells me.
"Ah, okay, and then we can just get back to Reggio normally?" I ask, just in the interest of having her smilingly confirm. "Of course," she will probably say.
No. She hesitates for a moment, briefly looking up at the corner of the room.
"Well, maybe. But maybe not. C'e' sciopero oggi, sai," she explains. Splendid. (New word! Sciopero = strike. The Italians are excellent at striking. It's like France, except that sciopero is more fun to say than greve.)
We board the bus to Lucca. "When is the bus leaving?" I ask the driver. She shrugs, smiling pleasantly, "I don't know. Whenever they tell me I can leave." She gestures vaguely at the train station. Ah. Indeed. I pass the time by translating for some random tourists. The bus driver asks me where I am from and tells me she would've guessed Switzerland. I try to decide whether I should be pleased about this or not. (I think the key point would be this: Italian-speaking Swiss, or other-language-speaking Swiss? I think of this later, though, and fail to ask her.)
The landscape we pass on the way is lovely, but in Lucca, trains are being soppresso'd (cancelled) one by one. For the sciopero, you see. Apparently if we can get to Florence, it will be okay, because the sciopero is just in Tuscany. (So is Florence, I think to myself, but I don't point this out to the man who was nice enough to give me directions.) I translate this information for a few stray foreigners who must have heard me speaking English with my family and have gathered around me to ask questions through me. This is entertaining but not very helpful.
"If you walk about a kilometer and a half around the city walls, there's a bus station. Probably you can get a bus to Florence," a non-striking Trenitalia guy tells me. "If you're not in a hurry to get to Bologna, though, you can just stay here with us. We're friendly and we can just hang out and pass the time until the sciopero is over." (Roughly paraphrased.) Cute, but no. We take a cab to the bus station. We wait for an hour. We get on the bus for Florence and find that it stops at the train station before departing. The train station where we were *just* standing an hour or two ago. Sigh. We buy a ticket for the eurostar to Bologna and find that it is forty minutes late. We take a different Eurostar (I smile at the conductor and he lets us on. It's good to be a girl in Italy). We take the regionale back to Reggio and get fined for not having tickets but I tell part of our sad story to the guy and he only fines us once (instead of for all three of us). Good to be a girl.
I take my family to a cute restaurant with no menu and really old waiters and dessert on a cart. They have regional food and some of the best tiramisu ever (seriously). We have affettati misti, lambrusco, tortelli (verdi for them because they are not brave, and di zucca for me because, ormai, I am knowledgeable like a local and therefore know it is delicious... well, not really, but I like to pretend). They try the tortelli di zucca and agree that it is amazing. Huzzah. My mother likes the lambrusco despite being a frog and declaring her skepticism that fizzy red wine is a good idea.
"These are the best ravioli I have ever had!" she tells me. I do not inform her that they are not ravioli. It's not like I know the difference either (so much for knowledgeable). I am about to apologize for the ridiculous journey home (circa 8 hours of travel) when she says "and that bus ride was amazing. The paysage (landscape) is so beautiful." She sighs wistfully.
Which is why, Italy, you are pretty amazing. Even when you are suffering from a recent explosion and the region is on strike and no one seems to know what's going on, you drive us through beautiful hills and feed us tortelli and tiramisu and we are happy. Props to you.
However, next time, we may rent a car.
"Nah," I tell her. "It'll be less stressful if we just take the train. And a lot cheaper."
This turns out to have been a bad idea. Because we are going to Viareggio and the trip is planned for a date just a few days after the explosion. Sigh.
In fairness to trenitalia, the trip there is not that bad. Cheap regionale the whole way, change trains at Parma and Vezzano Ligure (we experience a moment of panic when my mother decides to follow our progress on a map and discovers that there is a Vezzano up near Udine), get off at Forte dei Marmi and take a free bus to Viareggio. We even get to see the very cool marble quarry storage yard things as we pass Carrara.
In Viareggio, things are sad. There are black ribbons on the flags, the trees near the train station are crisped, you can see blackened shells of buildings. "Sono stati carbonizzati," the taxi driver comments to me, on the subject of the victims. It is a throat-lump moment.
Despite that, the sea is lovely (my students are right, of course, and the water on this side is much better than on the Rimini side) and the seafood is lovely and spending time with the family is lovely.
On the way back, Trenitalia redeems itself for all of the organization and stress-free trips that I have experienced since being in Italy.
"No, the station is open today," the hotel person tells me, "you can just get the regular train home." We take a cab to the train station. I look at the departures board and find that "open" is not the same as "actually having trains going through it".
"You can take a bus to Lucca," the biglietteria lady tells me.
"Ah, okay, and then we can just get back to Reggio normally?" I ask, just in the interest of having her smilingly confirm. "Of course," she will probably say.
No. She hesitates for a moment, briefly looking up at the corner of the room.
"Well, maybe. But maybe not. C'e' sciopero oggi, sai," she explains. Splendid. (New word! Sciopero = strike. The Italians are excellent at striking. It's like France, except that sciopero is more fun to say than greve.)
We board the bus to Lucca. "When is the bus leaving?" I ask the driver. She shrugs, smiling pleasantly, "I don't know. Whenever they tell me I can leave." She gestures vaguely at the train station. Ah. Indeed. I pass the time by translating for some random tourists. The bus driver asks me where I am from and tells me she would've guessed Switzerland. I try to decide whether I should be pleased about this or not. (I think the key point would be this: Italian-speaking Swiss, or other-language-speaking Swiss? I think of this later, though, and fail to ask her.)
The landscape we pass on the way is lovely, but in Lucca, trains are being soppresso'd (cancelled) one by one. For the sciopero, you see. Apparently if we can get to Florence, it will be okay, because the sciopero is just in Tuscany. (So is Florence, I think to myself, but I don't point this out to the man who was nice enough to give me directions.) I translate this information for a few stray foreigners who must have heard me speaking English with my family and have gathered around me to ask questions through me. This is entertaining but not very helpful.
"If you walk about a kilometer and a half around the city walls, there's a bus station. Probably you can get a bus to Florence," a non-striking Trenitalia guy tells me. "If you're not in a hurry to get to Bologna, though, you can just stay here with us. We're friendly and we can just hang out and pass the time until the sciopero is over." (Roughly paraphrased.) Cute, but no. We take a cab to the bus station. We wait for an hour. We get on the bus for Florence and find that it stops at the train station before departing. The train station where we were *just* standing an hour or two ago. Sigh. We buy a ticket for the eurostar to Bologna and find that it is forty minutes late. We take a different Eurostar (I smile at the conductor and he lets us on. It's good to be a girl in Italy). We take the regionale back to Reggio and get fined for not having tickets but I tell part of our sad story to the guy and he only fines us once (instead of for all three of us). Good to be a girl.
I take my family to a cute restaurant with no menu and really old waiters and dessert on a cart. They have regional food and some of the best tiramisu ever (seriously). We have affettati misti, lambrusco, tortelli (verdi for them because they are not brave, and di zucca for me because, ormai, I am knowledgeable like a local and therefore know it is delicious... well, not really, but I like to pretend). They try the tortelli di zucca and agree that it is amazing. Huzzah. My mother likes the lambrusco despite being a frog and declaring her skepticism that fizzy red wine is a good idea.
"These are the best ravioli I have ever had!" she tells me. I do not inform her that they are not ravioli. It's not like I know the difference either (so much for knowledgeable). I am about to apologize for the ridiculous journey home (circa 8 hours of travel) when she says "and that bus ride was amazing. The paysage (landscape) is so beautiful." She sighs wistfully.
Which is why, Italy, you are pretty amazing. Even when you are suffering from a recent explosion and the region is on strike and no one seems to know what's going on, you drive us through beautiful hills and feed us tortelli and tiramisu and we are happy. Props to you.
However, next time, we may rent a car.
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