Smoking or Non-Smoking

It was a success as far I can tell. Everyone that attended our recent party said they had a good time and the amount of food and beverages consumed seems to back up their hypothesis. We had around thirty guests and in her typical fashion Lauren was able to put on a party that was simultaneously elegant and fun. The only disaster to speak of involved my grilling skills.

Since our garden is shared and very enclosed Lauren…ehhum…we, decided that this should be the charcoal grill’s last appearance since it tends to waft that ever so pleasant smoky aroma into others’ windows. It went out with a bang; or more appropriately with a huge cloud of vengeful smoke. It seems that the sheer number of burgers put on the grill, plus the fact that I neglected to open the vents sufficiently, snuffed the cooking fire quickly. Thinking quickly I prepared the charcoal starting chimney with another load while opening the grill lid to allow maximum air to the dying fire. The slowly smoldering grill and just starting charcoal chimney billowed smoke and hamburger fumes all across the garden, and the trapped swirling wind only managed to exasperate the problem. Fortunately the non-smoking quest were able to huddle in the relative clear air around the drinks while those who smoked stood close by and inhaled deeply…saving about $30 on a carton of cigarettes. After about 10 mins and apparently a few bottles of wine, nobody seemed to notice the intense smell of smoke in their clothes and hair and enjoyed their well cooked and very authentically flavored burgers.

Yep, it’s Still Italy

From time to time, this is hard to believe I know, I kind of forget I live in Italy. Well obviously I can’t carry on conversations with people and the driving is still a bit scary and the buildings are really old; I think we have really settled in. Then days like yesterday happen. We took the mail run in order to prepare for an upcoming party. Just stepping onto the base is being transported to a small piece of America, even if the girl serving your burger at Burger King or the lady checking you out at the grocery store speak with an Italian accent, it’s really strange to be back in the USA…and frankly exhausting. Trips up there are usually packed full of stops and errands and this one was not an exception. Additionally the consuming of a “Value Meal”, large Coke and all, leaves a huge ball of ugg in my stomach that makes me wonder how I ever ate that to begin with.

Additionally there are little reminders all around Ferrara, besides all the Italians and old buildings…I know! First of all as we exited the Autostrada there was a wizard walking out of the toll tag office. That’s right a wizard! Dressed head to toe in black with a long black robe and a high collar…or if you're Catholic you call those guys a priest. I shouted out "hey look that guys is dressed up like a wizzard, you don't see that everyday!" No sooner had the words come out of my mouth did I realize my idiocy. But the coupe de grae was the unloading of the huge amount of American food from our car. Besides the fact that we drive the Caddy, we had a HUGE white cooler, the kind you take fishing, which we borrowed from a friend to haul our frozen goods. About 6 cases of American beer, we also brought some back for our friends, a whole bushel of Potato chips and Cokes. It was such a scene and took me so long to unload the parking lot guys across the street actually got out of their chairs, out of the shade and walked over to get a better view…I guess they don’t see much Budweiser around here.

A Good Bird Dog

Despite the semi-rural and very agricultural area that we live in I have seen very few animals around. Aside from a few goats, sheep, horses and the very rare cow there are few farm type animals; and I have seen very few wild critters. In fact my friend’s father noticed that there was never any road kill around here. There is one exception, wild pheasants.

There are literally herds of them, as flocks are not adequate to describe the number of them around work. Additionally the ring necks are huge, and look like turkeys from a distance…no kidding. Every morning it is not unusual to see at least five and I have counted more than twenty. The pheasants also taunt us, hiding in the tall grass around the perimeter fence and calling when we get too close. They are so populace and come up so close that we have begun to plot ways to put a few on our dinner plates. The two biggest problems are no shot guns and Italian jail. But we have begun to consider alternate means; including throwing rocks, booby traps and the best idea is a sling shot. I don’t think anyone would be to bothered if I were able to bag a few while I was out for a run…I just have to figure out the best way to cook one.

Everybody has a Story

Normally I do not text, particularly while walking, biking or especially driving. I have recently made exceptions, particularly since we have become the proud owners of the wondrous gadget that is an I-phone. My first outing with the phone was biking to meet some friends for drinks and dinner. It was a complex plan involving several guys and their wives who where all in different places, on different schedules and a few needing directions…luckily I had the I-phone. Unfortunately my biking/texting/google-maping/emailing/phone calling multitasking nearly resulted in my plowing over an elderly gentleman biking through an intersection. After my perfuse apology, which I have learned in Italian, we went on our way sans the I-phone multitasking. A few minutes later, while greeting my friends in the main square in town, I hear a bike bell frantically ringing and the screeching of bike brakes followed by some angry Italian shouting…turns out it is the same guy from earlier.

It seems he was going the same way as me and apparently recognized the fact that I “ain’t from around here.” Turns out he is retired from more than 30 years in the Aeronautica Militare (Italian Air Force) and is a wealth of information about our city. He told us the story of the catherdral and castle construction; as well as a juicy tidbit involving a statue of a monk on the front of the cathedral. It seems he wasn’t a monk/prest at all, but the illigetimate son of one of the Estes. A healthy donation to the Pope kept both out of trouble and got the son accepted into the “priesthood”.

I Have Gas

Here in Italy things are sometimes complicated, including simple things like paying bills. See our gas bills don’t get paid by us, but by the US government. We in turn pay them because we are exempt from the Italian taxes. Well, surprising I know, it got screwed up and the Italians turned off our gas…while we had guests. I had my landlord phone the gas folks to find out what was up and their instructions involved some faxes, officially stamped of course, and a minimum of 2 days to get the gas back on. The office which I phoned the next day, tried to take steps to fix it, but I would guess it would be about a week to fix…again big surprise. I have taken things into my own hands and turned the gas on myself, sometimes it pays to have a little redneck blood.
The gas guys did show up, four days later, to turn on the gas. As expected, they took little notice of the fact that I had turned on the gas; after all this is Italy and things are confusing and complicated and often more than one person or no one gets assigned a job. They just shrugged, ran some checks, filled out and signed forms and said “va bene”; good to go.

PDA

With the warming weather and the reemergence of the sun there has also been a reemergence of something else…PDA. I’m not talking about the kind that organizes your day, but the kind where random people, from teens to retirees, are smooching excessively in public. It even happens on, or near, famous landmarks. Yesterday did not disappoint as people were making out all over St. Mark’s Square in Venice, including one bride and groom taking wedding pictures.

Launch the Space Shuttle, and Other Parking Adventures

Not long ago, after a 7 or so month wait, we had our parking space open up. We are allowed to park one car in the lot across the street, along with other public parkers, which is managed by a trio of Italian guys who look exactly how you would imagine Italian parking lot attendants to look. Perhaps not the smartest set of guys, but they work hard and are very nice. Of course there have been many adventures already; otherwise parking is not worth mentioning here.
To start, the guys keep a copy of our keys, so they can move our giant car around and accommodate space for “paying” customers. There are some rules: we are only allowed one car in the lot at a time and we leave our designated space mostly vacant during the day while I am at work. We elected to keep the Cady in the lot since Lauren prefers to drive the smaller BMW (see previous post on driving in Italy) and we have more sets of Cady keys. Of course, they were baffled, well not totally baffled, but at least confused by the Caddy with its automatic and manu-matic shifting options. They apparently mostly have experience on your more basic Fiats and what not which only have manual shift, as most cars in Europe. Then last week we had an incident.
Lauren went out to take the car someplace, which does not happen often as I usually drive it to work, and it reeked of smoke. When she confronted the parking guy about it, all in Italian (brava), he looked at her as if she was from the Moon and said “of course”. It seems our friend is a heavy smoker, judging from both the time I see him without a cigarette (never) and the gravelly sound of his voice. She threw what was later described as “my first Italian hissy-fit”. She said that I was “going to be very mad” (which may have been true but I couldn’t stop laughing at the telling of the story) and it involved several “No fumare in machine” and “come se dice ‘angry’ en Italiano?” Apparently to the amusement of several “paying customers” (all men) and the three parking amigos. I decided that the smoking in the car issue was covered so I did not address it the next time I ran into them.
Of course they speak zero English and so our conversations, the smoking incident notwithstanding, mostly involve “hellos’ and occasional direction on where to park. Then the other day I can home and the guys were in a bit of a pickle. It seems the lot was very full and many people were ready to leave. The only hang up was one very nice and very new BMW 5 or 7 series was blocking in several other cars. This is not uncommon since they play a kind of parking lot shuffle to maximize their parking usage. This car however was stumping them good. For starters they couldn’t figure out how to start it, so they enlisted me to help them out (I guess I was qualified since my car is “complicated” too. My car has nothing on this thing.
Just starting the thing is tricky, involving a key and 2 buttons. The shifter is not a consol shift like most of today’s cars, but a column shift…but not like your 1972 Buick. The shift lever is smaller than the blinker lever and involves, from what I deduced while driving, mostly electronics in shifting the gears. Furthermore, once the car is running the displays rival most aircraft I have flown; including GPS navigation, color displays, a head’s up display and sensors that prevent you from bumping things on all four sides with a corresponding color warning display. I don’t blame them for enlisting a professional aviator to handle such a complex high performance machine.