Europe 2009: Italy, Pt. I

Friday July 3, 2011

Milan—Recco, Italy

At the airport in Milan the woman behind the counter at the car rental was very pleased to inform us that the car they would be providing us with would be the new Fiat 500.  “Fiat-ah Five-ah undred!” Perhaps I should have been suspicious.  Not only did the woman say this twice, “Fiat-ah Five-ah undred! Very Pleased!” but she also had a big black eye.  None of this caught my attention however.  I had seen the new Fiats in Paris and, looking like a cross between a Mini Cooper and a bumper car, I couldn’t wait to drive one. 

Cut to a highway in the middle of nowhere.  In the midst of multiple lanes of fast moving traffic, we pulled up to an automated tollbooth, whereupon I reached out the window, pressed the button for the ticket and then, while waiting for said ticket, pressed the button on the dash to turn on the radio.  The car went completely lifeless.  It just expired right there, no cough, no gasp, nothing.  Back at the airport, when we first picked up the car, I had found two neon-orange safety vests folded neatly in the driver’s side pocket door.  “Like we’d ever wear these!” I joked to Lu, while tossing them over my shoulder into the back.  Now, with traffic bearing down on us, I lunged into the back desperate to find them. 

(This story goes on but a lot of what happened is on the video.  Here is a bit more of what happened that day.)

From the airport in Milan we drove south to Recco.  The driving here is nerve raking. The mountain roads are narrow, twisty as hell and have no shoulders, and Vespa motor scooters, like a never-ending plague of locusts, beep and whine by in total disregard of oncoming traffic or blind corners.  By the time we arrived in town I was soaked through from the stress. 
 

Parking presented its own kind of nightmare.  For starters, there are no free spaces in Italy.  Every conceivable inch of roadside real estate was claimed generations before you got there.  Then, when you do come upon a space that in the right light might sort of look like a place you could fit your car, you have to slide into it sideways at 70 miles per hour. 

After circling the town two or three hundred times (I now really KNOW Recco), I just pulled up onto a curb, left the car and jumped into the sea.  Bliss.     

We had lunch and then checked into our BnB,  Acquerieche [aqua-ree-kay] “rich waters,” a stately old home back up the hill, and then took a nap.  For some reason the soles of my feet had become dark brown with dirt (see photo to the right) and Lu refused me access to the bed until I washed them.  I did as I was told (not happily or silently) but my feet still didn’t come clean.  The brown was from the die of my flip-flops.  Note to self: don’t wear leather flip-flops after swimming.   

Lu is reading David Sedaris’s new book, “When You Are Engulfed In Flames.”  She will be quiet for a few minutes and then break out in this wild peal of laughter.  She tries to read me whatever it was that was so funny but ends up handing me the book and pointing where to start.  Nothing I read is as funny as watching her laugh.

After a long silence Lu turns to me with a very serious and studious look and asks, “Baby, what is twat?”

Insert cheek between molars.  Clamp down, hard.  “It’s slang for Vagina."

“Really?”

“Uh huh.”

“I didn’t know this… Twat.”

Later, she asks, “What is billy club?”

“It’s the stick that policemen carry.”

“Really?  Billy club?”

“Uh huh.  London’s bobbies don’t carry guns, right?  They carry billy clubs.”

“Who?”

“Bobbies.”

Luciana laughs.  “Bobbies carry billies?”

Sunday July 5, 2009

Italian women by the coast are breathtaking at seventeen but look like old shoes by nineteen.  The men are born old.  People here are insane for the sun.  Everyone lies out.  And by the looks of their skin, no one has ever heard of sunscreen. 

Two photos that I regret missing:  One was in Paris of a very pregnant woman in a tight little black dress walking down the street and smoking.  The other was today: a young woman on a Vespa drove in front of us down a wildly curvy mountain road while talking the entire time on her cell phone.  It was so dangerous it was funny.  

I can’t say enough about how much I hate the motorcycles and scooters here.  The way they fly up behind you and then pass regardless of what is coming in the other direction is insane making.  Everyone is playing a perpetual game of chicken with each other.  If you slow down or use your horn you lose points and, apparently, respect.  When we first arrived and I hadn’t yet learned the rules I would pull off to the side of the road to make room for the motorcycles and scooters to pass.  So naive.  Now when they pull up along side me I ever so gently edge them into oncoming traffic. There is nothing more satisfying than denying a Vespa access to pass.  The hand gestures in the rear view are priceless.

Lu has known Ricardo and his family since they were kids.  Like Lu, Ricardo became a dealer by having worked alongside his father.  Ricardo sells very expensive stones that he often goes to great lengths and sometimes great risk to get.  Two months ago in a marketplace in Pakistan a bomb exploded five hundred feet in front of him.  The blast almost knocked him off his feet.  A week after he left the country the hotel where he had been staying was destroyed.  He tells us with a laugh that he has decided not to go back.  “Too dangerous.” 

           

I just said to Lu, “Do you realize that we are lying in bed waiting to hungry?”

“I’m already hungry,” she replied.  

“You are?”

“Yes,” she said.  “I’m just waiting for the sun to go down a little bit so it isn’t so hot when we walk.”

The restaurant is literally a hundred feet down the road.

Monday July 6, 2009

            Breakfast here is a comedy.  Orieta, the owner of Acqueriche, and her assistant, a beautiful Nigerian woman with dreads and an impenetrable accent, serve coffee, bread and cakes in the garden.  It sounds simple enough but the women have absolutely no system for the way they do things and the whole production ends up taking the better part of an hour to complete.  First come the place mats and “Bon journos” all around.   If I have arrived before Lu, which most mornings I do, the conversation ends there.  If, on the other hand, Lu and I arrive together, then all work grinds to a halt while the three women catch up for five or ten minutes.  In time a thermos of coffee shows up but without the cups to put it in.  Then the napkins are brought out, followed by a basket of bread and a selection of teas for Lu.  Two individual trips produce two different jars of jam.  Another trip yields the sugar bowl, and yet another brings us water for Lu’s tea and finally, thanks be to Jesus, cups.  It is now nearly lunchtime.

           

In the little seaside village of San Margarhita a van pulled away from the curb and hit a passing motorcyclist.  The bike and rider went over and skidded for a few long yards.  The guy then popped up to his feet and brought the bike back up with him.  The momentum spun the guy, now sneakerless, to standing on the sidewalk and sent his riderless bike like some ghostly specter down the middle of the street.  The whole city seemed to hold its breath, locked in silent vigil for the bike to stop without anyone else being hurt.  At last the bike veered off the street and, just missing an oblivious guy walking down the sidewalk, crashed into a harbor-side cafe that was, by the grace of God, empty.  Tables and chairs shattered and went flying.  The rider looked like he was in shock but, aside from a pretty severe ass burn, seemed otherwise unhurt.  Had there been oncoming traffic at the moment he went over—it’s a miracle there wasn’t—he would have been killed.  A woman called the police on her cell phone and a waiter stepped into the street and signaled the traffic to slow down, which it did... for about three seconds.  Yesterday Lu had referred to driving in Italy as “beautiful chaos.”  Today it was just chaos.  A few minutes later an ambulance arrived and took the rider away.