Ciao again everyone, thanks for clicking on "La Vita Italiana" for a quick check in! Lots happening here...we just got back to being "una zona gialla" [yellow zone] yesterday! It's welcomed news...now this might be a bit confusing to you...after all, weren't we "going back to yellow" in our last post?" Yes, we were yellow for a couple of days earlier in January, but then we plunged back into the boredom/agony of orange...fast forward two weeks, and we're moving in the right direction again! There's definitely a lot of pent-up demand for folks to get out and enjoy restaurants and cafes, so the next couple of weeks should be pretty lively around here. Looking forward to the chance to maybe get out of town and very carefully start traveling again.
Speaking of things moving in the right direction...[sorry, pause for a moment of politics], big news out of the U.S.—we have a new President! Barbara and I enjoyed watching the inauguration (an afternoon affair in the USA, meaning we could watch it live here); we celebrated the not-exactly-peaceful transition of power in front of the TV, drinking...you guessed it, a couple of Americanos (vermouth and campari, both from the Piemonte region).
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So I thought it might be fun to do another quick roundup of...some of the many quirky moments that we experience here...more "oh, that is so Italy!" moments. Enjoy!
You Know You're in Italy When:
You gotta make your own ice: It's well known that Italians, and Europeans in general, don't use a lot of ice—it's understandable, when you don't serve a lot of 32 oz. sodas and iced teas, and the water at the restaurant is bottled, you just don't need a lot of ice cubes. And a pretty frugal culture, with relatively small refrigerators, isn't going to invest a lot in an ice-maker. So Barbara and I have become reacquainted with the every-other-day ritual of refilling the ice cube trays we brought back from Atlanta last summer!
You can get your haircut at 7:30 in the morning, or 7:30 at night: Italians are stylish, good-looking people who take a lot of care in their appearance—they leave home with the intention to look good, and to look appropriate, when out in public (as comedian Sebastian Maniscalco says in this hilarious video, "when you see the world, the world sees you"); that's why you'll rarely see any self-respecting adult Italian in public wearing torn jeans, a baseball cap, white socks, or yoga pants.
In particular, Italians like a good haircut, and they get them frequently, both men (uomini) and women (donne). There seems to be a small, one-man old-school barbiere, or slightly larger, full-service parrucchiere on every corner, and they are always busy. There are also small accontiature, which appear to be for the ladies. [Any Italian friends reading this, please clarify for all of us!]
But most notable is the hours of operation for these small businesses. In a country whose retailers shut down most days from 1:00-4:00, and for all of August, check out the orario for our parrucchiere—open from 7:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. or 9:00 p.m., 6 days a week! And this isn't the barber shop located in the Wal-Mart, this is one of a dozen quality salons in our little city. The farmacia isn't open this much!
The biggest section in the supermarket is for the olive oil: What can I say? The olive oil here is otherworldly, and the brands/ varieties are endless. They say the best comes from the south of Italy—Puglia, Calabria, Sicily—but great olives are grown all over the country and there's plenty of production in Liguria and Tuscany as well. And as you might imagine, it goes on everything! So it's easy to see why it has such a dominant position on the supermarket shelves.
Blue lines = "OK to park"; Yellow lines = "Don't park": Yes it all seems backwards to an American here. Usable parking areas/spots are lined in blue; restricted spots are lined in yellow. We always have to do a double-take after we park somewhere on the street—"wait, is this spot legit?"
You can watch a Steven Seagal movie pretty much any time: We mostly watch Hulu, Netflix etc. here, but we do watch a fair amount of "terrestrial" TV as well. It's always fun to scroll through the Italian channels, especially at night—it's a good way to try to learn Italian, and an even better way to see what kind of entertainment trash makes its way across the ocean from the U.S. The Italians have imported solid American shows from yester-year, like The Big Bang Theory, House, or Judging Amy, and they LOVE their police procedurals (CSI, NCIS, etc.), but they seem to like their past-their-sell-by-date, bargain-bin TV as well—think Eight is Enough, Little House on the Prairie, Charlie's Angles [OK, I admit I watch it once in a while, it's on just before TBBT; I was always a bit of a Jaclyn Smith fan; and who knew Farrah Fawcett was only on for 1 season!].
But the American movies they show here are the most fascinating—it's all B-movie-quality violence, mayhem, and apocalypse straight from the USA! And no one personifies poorly-produced, poorly-acted violence better than Mr. Steven Seagal. He is to Italy what David Hasselhoff is to the Germans. Either that, or he owns the TV stations here because it seems like he is on every night here. And it's not early Seagal, when he was still somewhat fit and could lift his leg high enough to deliver a blow—this is late-stage Seagal, with the weird sunglasses and bulky jackets that conceal the effects of too many trips to the craft services table.
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I hope you enjoyed another quick glimpse into la vita quotidiana here in Italy, and, aside from the Seagal movies, I hope you have the chance to experience it all first-hand some day soon! Stay tuned for an upcoming post about the best day trip ever—an autumn bike trip in the Langhe!