'Colpo D'Aria' and a Day Trip

Hey folks, please say congratulations - today we reached our one-year anniversary as Italian residents! Wow, that date kinda snuck up on us (can you believe 2020 is half over?), and so has the heat of summer. Like all Italians, we are planning our escape(s) from the city...more on that soon, but first, about that heat...bottom line on top: Our romantic Italian anniversary gift to each other was...screens on our windows!

Wait, how bad does the heat get? The very thick stone walls and high ceilings really help, but it reaches 85+ most days, and although the humidity is not as bad as, say, Atlanta, it's rough when your 15th century apartment building doesn't have air conditioning!

2-foot-thick stone walls - good for cooling, bad for wiring

Why no AC? I assumed it was because of the cost to retrofit these old buildings (the downside of thick stone walls), or the potential to overload the so-so electrical grid.

But when we asked around, rather than a cost/benefit analysis, we got a couple of stern lectures about the dangers of a truly Italian phenomenon known as "colpo d'aria" - literally "air blow" (I think our parents' generation referred to it as a "draft"). Italians feel very strongly that a sudden blast of air, especially cold air, is very bad for your health. It can lead to all sorts of problems, including a stiff neck, a headache, or even indigestion. And it's not just an old superstition; when our friend Kate wasn't feeling well, her doctor told her she "just needed to wear socks" when she went to bed!

This guy gets it!

So, we've been instructed to not expose ourselves to a strong breeze, and to wear a vest or undershirt to protect the body and a (stylish) scarf to protect the neck. And beware: never sit near an air conditioning vent, or heaven forbid try to exert yourself after you've been exposed to air conditioning! And if you don't have air conditioning, why in the world would you try to install this box of evil in your home?

Ahh, looking out the terrazza through our new screens

Until this week, our only alternative was to open the windows and cleverly arrange our fans around the apartment to create some air flow (shhh, don't tell anyone). But the windows here don't have screens, and you all know what a mosquito magnet I am...screens are more and more common here, but they are still rare - in fact, I was asking one of my fluent-in-English colleagues if she had screens on her windows, and she didn't even recognize the word "screens." It took a couple of minutes to explain what I was talking about, and finally she said "oh you mean mosquito nets for the windows!"

So, it took some doing, but great news - our landlord helped us put in real screens on several of our windows; so life just got a lot better! And what's more romantic than a good night's sleep with a cool, mosquito-free breeze blowing across your sock-covered feet?

---

And now a quick travel story: We tried a new idea yesterday and took our bikes on the local train. We wanted to go explore nearby (40 km) Asti - but didn't want to drive, and it was a little too far to go by bike. So instead we biked to the Pessione train station (10 km) and took the train straight to Asti. It was easier than we thought it might be:

1. Bike to Pessione (you may remember Pessione as the home of Martini and Rossi and their museum that we visited in October with my brother).

2. Buy your tickets - the station at Pessione is so small, no one works there; you have to go across the street to the tobacconist to buy your biglietti

3. You have to buy a ticket supplement to bring your bike onboard. And yes they frequently check your tickets on the train, so don't try to cheat!

4. Hop on, help yourself to some hand sanitizer, and you are on your way to Asti!

Clockwise from top left: Martini and Rossi museum; get your biglietti from the tobacco guy; pay a "Supplemento Bici" for the bikes; here's comes il treno!

Asti is a lovely town, bigger than Chieri (75,000 people), but still pretty low-key. Its claims to fame include:

Asti's original name: "Hasta"

• Serving as a major wine hub for the Langhe area - it's the source the sparkling wine Asti Spumante of course, and the well-regarded red Barbera that features as the go-to table wine all over the Piemonte region;

• Hosting "la feria del tartufo," the Truffle Fair each September that brings in thousands of visitors;

Dedicated to the partisan fighters

• Asti served as one of the centers of the Italian resistance during WWII; the "partigiani" are honored at "Parco della Resitenza"

• Asti proudly hosts the oldest "palio" in all of Italy; il palio is a quintessential Italian event held in many towns around the country - a bareback horse race run around a tightly packed piazza (it's most famous version is in Siena, featured in "Quantum of Solace" when James Bond escaped from his captors up through a sewer into the middle of the chaotic horse race)

Piazza Alfieri, site of the Asti palio

All in all, a relaxing and productive week, close to home. We're going to wrap it up with a quick journey down to Alba (Asti's neighbor down the Tanaro River, home of even more amazing wine and supposedly the best truffles!). Ciao!