Happy Halloween!

Sunrise this morning revealed both a Trick and a Treat...

Belvedere

In boxes, bags, suitcases and duffels, we made our way uphill in stages this last week, settling into our new place for the next 6 months. Thanks to our friends who spend half their year in Portland, we are renting their wonderful apartment overlooking Genoa. 

We are now in the heart of the Castelletto neighborhood, a hillside area which sat outside of Genoa’s city walls until the 1600s. It was occupied by a series of fortresses beginning in the 10th century AD, commanding the Genoese area. Then in the 1800s it became the neighborhood for the workers who supported the wealthy families and merchants in the city and its port. As the city expanded into the surrounding hills, Castelletto became a thriving residential quarter, including the Belvedere (from "beautiful sight" in Italian) viewpoint where we are lucky to be living.

Looking from the historic center below, the buildings of the Belvedere sit perched on a hilltop. This makes for extraordinary views back into the city, and across the full expanse of Genoa: 

For us, it also means a new outlook, literally and figuratively. Waking to this view every day makes it clear why Genoa was nicknamed la Superba ("the Superb one") by early European visitors. 

We are looking forward to a superb 6 months of living here!

Cell Sister

Her call...

...appears to have been answered!

Un giorno a Genova

     Our friends in the US often ask about our “typical day” here, outside of the events and highlights we post to this blog. So, for those of you who are curious about the more mundane aspects of this adventure, here’s a brief summary of a typical weekday:


Waking the girls is no easier here than in the US, and involves the same exhaustive mix of repetitive requests, opening window shades, removing blankets, and ultimately, threats of having them go to school in their PJs! All of this is fueled by much-needed morning coffee, prepared in a beloved moka – the elixir-producing device of choice for home prepared coffee in Italy. 


We usually manage to all be sitting for breakfast by 7’ish, with the girls speeding through their cereale before our rush to get backpacks situated, snacks packed, and grembiule buttoned up. Then it’s the morning climb to school, and into the throng of parents and families gathered in the courtyard for drop off.  


Sometimes that’s followed by an invitation for a coffee with a few of the parents, which isn't the leisurely affair that happens in the US. Coffee bars are everywhere, and the norm is to consume your espresso or cappuccino (only ordering the latter if it's before 11am!) while standing and chatting.



Now doubled-up on morning caffeine, we stop at the market and/or local shops to pick up the day's food. Since there are no big supermarkets, each neighborhood is dotted with small grocery stores, fruit stands, bakeries, pasta shops and butchers. It alters the notion of food shopping when it’s a daily process, often with multiple stops. There’s a more immediate connection to what you're buying when the vendors are “specialists,” and when there’s a more personal connection to the person behind the counter. And as with all things in Italy, patience and adaptability are required: you never know what's in stock, which supplier did/didn't make a delivery, or what is considered sufficiently “in season” to be available. 



The remainder of the morning through early afternoon is spent in some combination of handling logistics and plans, running errands, Italian lessons, taking care of work, and keeping up with our cyber-selves. Then it’s back to school for pick up at 13:00, sometimes stopping to bring fresh focaccia to the girls (yes, we frequently remind them of their good fortune!) as a way to tide them over during the walk home. 

Afternoons encompass making and eating lunch together, going to after-school activities a few days per week (Tae Kwon Do, ginnastica artistica, and singing lessons), occasional play dates, and chores -- followed by the reward of satisfying our a 2-3x per week gelato habit! There’s also the evening slog through homework (compiti) before dinner. The girls are starting to be able to manage homework on their own, but coping with doing everything in Italian is a struggle.

Dinner then happens later here than in the US, and we are still adjusting to the pasta-centric life. (It seems unimaginable that children could tire of pasta, but apparently it’s possible!) Ideally the girls are tucked in by 21:00 (everything is in 24-hour time here), and after cleaning up and clearing out both our physical and cyber-surroundings, we sign off for the night. 


We also recently came to the realization that our wine consumption is woefully behind the per capita average in Italy of 50 liters per year (vs. 12 liters in the US). That is a statistical anomaly we intend to remedy in the winter months ahead!




So, there you have it. 
Nothing especially remarkable or romantic, and that’s also meant an adjustment to our expectations. “Under the Tuscan Sun” and “Eat, Pray, Love” propagate a notion of the expat life that’s not always possible. But even if our experience is more often “Under the Italian Thumb” or “Eat, Play, Lug”, we’re enjoying the adventure!

Perplesso

It's a look we've seen many times: a Genoese with a puzzled (perplesso) expression, wondering how we could be so oblivious to something so obvious to a local.  

In this case, it was on the face of our generous friend Nicola, who offered a ride to the doctor's appointment we wrote about recently.  (Perhaps he was taking pity on me!)  

"So, where is your jacket?" he asks.

"Oh please, am I supposed to be dressed formally for visiting the doctor in Italy?!"

"Of course not," he replies, his puzzled expression now transforming into full-fledged bewilderment. "You'll want a jacket if I'm giving you a ride!" He then points to his motorcycle, and the second helmet waiting on the seat.

As the girls' posted a month ago, scooters and motorcycles are the primary form of transportation in Genoa. With the small, steep and winding streets, lack of parking (which is why we don't have a car), and limited public transit (including one of the world's smallest subway systems, consisting of a single 8-station line), Genoa is sometimes called the "European Capital of Scooters." So, it shouldn't have been a surprise that "a ride" meant riding on the back of a motorcycle. (At least in this case it was a comfortable Triumph Bonneville, and not one of the thousands of ancient Vespas zipping along Genoa roads and alleyways.)

With jacket retrieved and helmet secured, a fantastic ride followed -- winding our way through the city and along the shoreline. Thankfully, there was only one other puzzled query from Nicola. At the first stoplight he turned around with a wry smile to comment, "So, I gather you haven't done this much.  It would help if you leaned with me on the turns, instead of the other way!" 

No noises!

Following up to last weekend's post, living in Genoa also means there are a lot of sounds we don’t hear (or not much) when compared to living in Portland.  Some of the ones my sister and I have noticed are missing:

• The sound of recycling getting sifted through or picked up by the trash collectors.

Here everyone brings their trash and recycling to a central neighborhood spot. And since recycling items aren't worth any money, no one picks through the bins.

• The sound of small birds.

http://birdz-world.blogspot.it/2013/01/monk-parakeet.html

It’s pigeons, doves, seagulls and parrots here. Not parrots that talk, but a bunch of bright green parakeets living in our piazza! (They were let free by their owners in Genoa long ago, and started nesting in an old building and nearby palm tree.)

• The sound of construction machines.

The small streets mean that repairs are done mostly by hand – opening up areas brick-by-brick to get access to whatever is being fixed. (Like these mixed up phone lines!)

• The sound of sprinklers or lawnmowers.

There are almost no lawns or gardens here, other than what can fit on rooftops and balconies.

• The sound of helicopters and small planes.

For some reason there isn't any flying over the city.  But we do hear giant cruise ship horns a lot instead!

• The sound of bicycles.

Maybe because so many of the streets are small, steep, and made with stones or bricks, there are many motor scooters but none of the “clicking” we always hear in Portland when bikes go by.

• The sound of 7 months of drizzle.  

That sound is missing, but not missed!  Still, when it rains here it is usually a downpour, and kinda fun.

Calva!

This post should set expectations among friends, family and colleagues for our return home next year: we will likely be bald. (“Calvo/a” in Italian, but in the feminine for the title of this blog, as acknowledgement of who is mostly at the front lines of navigating all things Italian for us!) 

Today was the latest episode of bureaucracy-induced hair pulling, this time navigating 2 hours of calls to get a doctor’s appointment...at least we think we now have a doctor's appointment.


One highlight (hair-related pun intended, although it’s more like "lowlights"), as follows:

  Doctor’s office: “Now that we have your appointment scheduled, you can get the payment ticket completed.”
     (Note: All spoken in rapid Italian, which in itself is hair-raising.)
  Americana: “The what?”
  Drs. office: “The payment ticket, of course. Call this other number.”

First clump of hair pulled out.

  Payment ticket administrator: “Since you are not Italian, the payment ticket will need to be on a white form, not a standard red form. However, you need to see the doctor for a referral letter, so you can get the white form of the payment ticket.”
  Americana: “But the doctor won’t see us without the payment ticket!”

Second, larger clump of hair pulled out.

  Payment ticket administrator: “Well, then you can get the referral letter just before your appointment, bring that to us and we can fill out the white form, then you make payment of 20.36 Euro so we can stamp the form, then go back for the actual appointment.”
  This is so mind-numbing that no response is possible, and the Administrator takes the silence on the phone as his queue: “…and you can call me if you have questions.”
  Americana: “Okay, um, all of that sort of makes sense, and we will call if needed. What is your number?”
  Administrator: “Well, I'm actually new to this office, so I don’t have a phone yet.”

AHHHHHHHHH!!! No clumps of hair left to pull out, with complete baldness guaranteed any day now!

And we’ll then try to schedule an appointment with an alopecia specialist, only to be told we can’t get an appointment without first filling out another white form, for which we'll first need to see the doctor.  

Neighborhood Noises

Here are some of the things my sister and I are getting used to being woken up by or hearing out our apartment windows -- since we live in the middle of a big, crowded, seaside city!

(Make sure the videos aren't on "mute" , and turn the volume up to have the full affect!)
   

Bells

    

Birds

        

Buzzzzzzz

       

Bad Kitty!

Beeee-Boooo-Beeee-Boooo

Blah, Blah, Blah

       

Bang

        

Bwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!

      

Boom 

Genoa Lightening Photo -- From La Repubblica  Newspaper

        

…and, Dad!

The Politics of Italy

Just so our fellow US citizens know we share the pain of government ineptitude, here’s a quote from the news here:

     Italy’s prime minister Enrico Letta told a cabinet meeting -- tasked with approving key measures to rein in the recession-hit country's budget deficit -- that no further legislation would be enacted until the political crisis was resolved. The cabinet had convened to figure out how to delay a controversial planned rise in a sales tax, but escalating tension over former premier Silvio Berlusconi's tax fraud conviction saw it end in disarray. "I have no intention of limping along or being the subject of continuous threats," Letta said in a statement. "Either we go forward, and the interests of the country and citizens are put first, or this experience ends here."

Perhaps Showdown = Shutdown in Italy as well.