//pieces of Italy
Easily my favourite thing about Italy is the aperitivi. Each evening around five, the bars all serve aperitivi, like tapas, for free for as long as you drink alcohol.
As a warm up to dinner (or maybe to tide your stomach over until 9pm when people eat here), you can linger over your 3 euro glass of wine for at least two large plates of food.
It's worth noting that they aren't just any old tapas; they are the kind of things you expect to be served at somebody's wedding. Walking down the street is mouth watering, Each bar has its own style, some are classy, some do salads, some do proscuito with cheeses, others do little mini sandwiches and still others serve pieces of fruit and tiny sandwiches.
Every country has something to offer the world; Italy gave us pizza, but sadly it's keeping the aperitivi to itself.
....
Swimming pools in Italy are not worth the visit. when I asked Giordano for advice on which pool to visit he said "there's one that's 50 metres long but it's only open during the week". Umm, it's NOTEWORTHY that a pool is 50 metres long? At home it's the other way around, we take 50 metres for granted.
Never mind, we went to a 25 metre pool instead, and it was DIRTY. Remember, I am not some prissy little rich girl, I worked in a mine site and consequently I have showered in tiny cubicles that smell of urine and sweat, so when I say a place is dirty, it means something. Maybe to combat all the grunge, they had the chlorine turned up to the max, it practically burned my skin and my eyes nearly fried right in their sockets.
Maybe I would cut the place some slack, but the entry fee for a swim was around ten Australian dollars. For that price, I expect the services of a personal lifeguard, thanks very much.
Just don't swim in northern Italy, head south or visit in winter. No joke.
...
Italians don't make much use of supermarkets, it's far cheaper to buy each item you need at the relevant shop. For meat, the salumeria, for cheese it's the formaggeria, for fish it's the pescheria, for pizza it's the pizzeria and for bread it's the pasticceria. This sounds time consuming and frustrating and at first, it is. However, there's an upside: you make friends with your chosen shopkeepers and suddenly shopping is no longer a chore, but an enjoyable social occasion.
The shop next door to our house is run by a couple of shy Indian guys who speak Italian only marginally better than we do. They sell us our daily (ahem I mean... weekly) bottle of wine. The guy around the corner owns a little grocery shop and he speaks excellent English. He always expresses surprise that I am here because Australia is "troppo lontano" very far away. Everywhere, they greet us with a patient smile and speak to us slowly, repeating and explaining things when we look confused.
In Italy, it's obligatory to make friends with your local shopkeepers. The guy that runs your local bar (bar being coffee shop as well as pub), the guys in the little shop next door, the dude at your closest net cafe, the salumeria, formaggeria, paticceria, pizzeria. The first few times you visit, you are usually ignored, until suddenly you walk in and are met with a wide smile, a 'ciao bella' and, sooner or later, you are greeted by name. It's the best way to get good service and it makes the time consuming affair of shopping in Italy more bearable and even fun. (Living there might not be so fun but for tourists it's fine.)
...
Bologna is a good city to study Italian in, because the lack of tourists means that the locals still find 'stranieri' interesting and, more importantly, amusing. They make a lot of effort to talk to us, repeating things slowly when necessary and acting as though they are our personal Italian tutors. From people on the bus who make sure that we are able to understand their (apparently not private) conversation, to shop keepers who tell us what we need to pay in English and then repeat the amount slowly in Italian, everybody helps us with our Italian.
People always shyly speak English when it gets too confusing, but more and more often I am managing to leave shops without revealing my ignorance of the language.
...
Everybody always talks about how dangerous it is to drive in Italy, and while it is indeed a little hair raising at times, it has nothing on WALKING in Italy!
Every day Maaike and I take our lives gingerly in our hands and cross a particularly scary street on the way to school. At one particular point, the footpath is only about ten centimetres wide, and for some reason the buses and cars all seem to wait until we get to that point before roaring past. If there's a puddle, even better! The rear vision mirrors of the bus seem to miss our ears by only a few centimetres.
At the strisce pedonale (pedestrian stripes, zebra crossings) the cars beep you if you take too long, even when the little walking man is green. Be quick, be wary, and above all appear to be confident!
...
They have one and two cent pieces in Italy. God, I hate those little copper bastards.
...
Easily my favourite thing about Italy is the aperitivi. Each evening around five, the bars all serve aperitivi, like tapas, for free for as long as you drink alcohol.
As a warm up to dinner (or maybe to tide your stomach over until 9pm when people eat here), you can linger over your 3 euro glass of wine for at least two large plates of food.
It's worth noting that they aren't just any old tapas; they are the kind of things you expect to be served at somebody's wedding. Walking down the street is mouth watering, Each bar has its own style, some are classy, some do salads, some do proscuito with cheeses, others do little mini sandwiches and still others serve pieces of fruit and tiny sandwiches.
Every country has something to offer the world; Italy gave us pizza, but sadly it's keeping the aperitivi to itself.
....
Swimming pools in Italy are not worth the visit. when I asked Giordano for advice on which pool to visit he said "there's one that's 50 metres long but it's only open during the week". Umm, it's NOTEWORTHY that a pool is 50 metres long? At home it's the other way around, we take 50 metres for granted.
Never mind, we went to a 25 metre pool instead, and it was DIRTY. Remember, I am not some prissy little rich girl, I worked in a mine site and consequently I have showered in tiny cubicles that smell of urine and sweat, so when I say a place is dirty, it means something. Maybe to combat all the grunge, they had the chlorine turned up to the max, it practically burned my skin and my eyes nearly fried right in their sockets.
Maybe I would cut the place some slack, but the entry fee for a swim was around ten Australian dollars. For that price, I expect the services of a personal lifeguard, thanks very much.
Just don't swim in northern Italy, head south or visit in winter. No joke.
...
Italians don't make much use of supermarkets, it's far cheaper to buy each item you need at the relevant shop. For meat, the salumeria, for cheese it's the formaggeria, for fish it's the pescheria, for pizza it's the pizzeria and for bread it's the pasticceria. This sounds time consuming and frustrating and at first, it is. However, there's an upside: you make friends with your chosen shopkeepers and suddenly shopping is no longer a chore, but an enjoyable social occasion.
The shop next door to our house is run by a couple of shy Indian guys who speak Italian only marginally better than we do. They sell us our daily (ahem I mean... weekly) bottle of wine. The guy around the corner owns a little grocery shop and he speaks excellent English. He always expresses surprise that I am here because Australia is "troppo lontano" very far away. Everywhere, they greet us with a patient smile and speak to us slowly, repeating and explaining things when we look confused.
In Italy, it's obligatory to make friends with your local shopkeepers. The guy that runs your local bar (bar being coffee shop as well as pub), the guys in the little shop next door, the dude at your closest net cafe, the salumeria, formaggeria, paticceria, pizzeria. The first few times you visit, you are usually ignored, until suddenly you walk in and are met with a wide smile, a 'ciao bella' and, sooner or later, you are greeted by name. It's the best way to get good service and it makes the time consuming affair of shopping in Italy more bearable and even fun. (Living there might not be so fun but for tourists it's fine.)
...
Bologna is a good city to study Italian in, because the lack of tourists means that the locals still find 'stranieri' interesting and, more importantly, amusing. They make a lot of effort to talk to us, repeating things slowly when necessary and acting as though they are our personal Italian tutors. From people on the bus who make sure that we are able to understand their (apparently not private) conversation, to shop keepers who tell us what we need to pay in English and then repeat the amount slowly in Italian, everybody helps us with our Italian.
People always shyly speak English when it gets too confusing, but more and more often I am managing to leave shops without revealing my ignorance of the language.
...
Everybody always talks about how dangerous it is to drive in Italy, and while it is indeed a little hair raising at times, it has nothing on WALKING in Italy!
Every day Maaike and I take our lives gingerly in our hands and cross a particularly scary street on the way to school. At one particular point, the footpath is only about ten centimetres wide, and for some reason the buses and cars all seem to wait until we get to that point before roaring past. If there's a puddle, even better! The rear vision mirrors of the bus seem to miss our ears by only a few centimetres.
At the strisce pedonale (pedestrian stripes, zebra crossings) the cars beep you if you take too long, even when the little walking man is green. Be quick, be wary, and above all appear to be confident!
...
They have one and two cent pieces in Italy. God, I hate those little copper bastards.
...
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