Zeebrugge

We had got to Zeebrugge with just over an hour in hand so decided to take a look at the beach. Wide sandy beach, a lot of people there on this windy and rainy day as it was a bank holiday (1 May). Difficult to find somewhere to park.

People having drinks in the seafront bars, it looked a bit old-fashioned British in style. You can buy a modern apartment with balcony overlooking the pedestrian promenade at Zeebrugge, there were a number for sale. Intriguing, but we decided against.

A strong gust of wind send café chairs tumbling. Windy, damp, blowy day. The children on the promenade were enjoying it.

We had driven through pretty-much constant heavy rain all the way from northern Italy, but by good fortune every time we stopped, so did the rain. This was true at Zeebrugge.

A Flying in Nancy

The heavy rain stopped as we arrived in Nancy.

We were very impressed with Nancy and have resolved to take a longer visit there, we only saw part of it. Like many French towns it looks a bit dusty and unkempt in its suburbs, but the main square, Place Stanislav, is a fantastic World Heritage Site – quite rightly so. We sat at a bar for a drink in the square and then as it seemed a fair number of people were choosing that place to eat, we thought we might too.

Our waiter was a large man, perhaps in his twenties, with a neatly trimmed beard and a huge belly. I spoke to him in French but then when I struggled a bit with something he asked us he switched to English, which he spoke quite well. He wanted to know where we came from. When we said the north west of England he said, ‘May I ask a stupid question’.

‘Please do’.

‘Does in rain in north-west England as much as people say’.

‘Yes’, we both replied firmly and in unison.

For starter Hilary had a foie gras de canard, liver fat of duck. Foie gras is said by some to be cruel in its production, which may be so, but it is an extraordinary taste, like no other. A kind of delicate meaty, grainy butter. Meanwhile, since we were in the capital city of Lorraine, I had Quiche Lorraine, which is a posh way of saying egg-and-bacon flan.  This one was much moister than many you find in the UK and the bacon pieces were like Italian pancetta, little cubes. Very good.

For main course we had a kind of upmarket version of steak frites – we always eat steak frites in France. In this version the steak was rumpsteak done in pieces on a skewer, fairly raw as we had asked it to be done, served with chips and salad on a black rectangular plate. The waiter came to ask us how the dinner was going and as he did so Hilary yelled, ‘eeegh, oh gawd!’, for a beetle, possibly a cockroach, crawled sleepily from under her pile of chips.

Alexandre the waiter played this very professionally, he immediately took her plate and marched off to the kitchen with it. He returned a few moments later and said in English, ‘It was a flying that had fallen from the ceiling. They say they will re-make your plate’. 

And so it was that we each had near-on one and a half portions of rumpsteak each, since Hilary had nearly finished her meat on the first plate. Thus we could not manage a dessert, just some coffee which after Italy is always a relief, as the cup has a proper drink in it and in France coffee is pretty-much invariably good.

During the interim of the kitchen re-making the plate, we noticed a couple on a table nearby, a couple with nothing to say to each other. Couples in restaurants often have nothing to say to one another but these two were extreme examples, she sat for much of the time with her chin in her hand, her elbow resting on the table, while he jiggled his leg. Occasionally she removed her face from her hand in order to yawn a few times, then she put it back again. At length they decided each to fiddle on their smartphones.

‘Why do they stay together?’, asked Hilary, ‘It’s so painful. If we ever get like that, promise me we’d part’. In saying this, of course, we find that we do have something to say to each other, so this is one of those self-referencing conversations, a bit in the class of ‘This page is blank’. The couple were not very old, perhaps in their forties.

The bill for our dinner came to nearly €110, which is about double what we would expect to pay for a decent meal for two in our part of Italy. A third of that was taken up by a bottle of local red wine, served on ice, which was very nice, though we’re usually equally happy with the local plonk. At the Taverna Santa Vittoria a litre of red wine served in a recycled bottle comes in at €4, and the total bill for dinner for two is around the €25 mark. And is the steak in Nancy classier than what you get in the Taverna? Probably is, but we’re fond of the Taverna, and we’ve never yet discovered a bug in our chips, partly because we don’t buy chips there, but we’ve never discovered a bug in our corata either, though possibly you would be less likely to notice (corata is scrambled egg with chopped lamb’s heart – a Marche speciality).

And then of course you have the location. The World Heritage Site. But even so, still a bit steep, France does tend to be expensive for food.

Lugano

To get to Lugano we decided to drive the pretty route alongside Lake Como and then over the pass to the shores of Lake Lugano and along the side of that too.

The border between Italy and Switzerland on this road was not checked at all, we just drove straight through. With the amount of traffic on that narrow road the absence of border checks was probably the only expedient solution, whatever the Swiss might vote in their referendums.

But this route proved to be a mistake, not because it was not intrinsically pretty, and not because it was raining, it was because it was so busy, busy with tourists, many being herded along in parties. And this is April, what on earth must it be like in August? We asked ourselves rhetorically. We have had some successful holidays in a town on the other side of Lake Como, but we resolved never to go to that area again, but then again we thought, we are tourists too, so really we should not be snooty about this, it’s all our fault, people will be going to Cupra Marittima and San Bonifacio in their hordes soon, and we’ll complain it isn’t what it was and resolve never to go there again either.

A couple nearby to us in the restaurant we chose for dinner had nothing to say to each other. This was in Lugano, the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, how can Italian speakers ever have nothing to say? With listening we found out how. The couple were both American.

Lugano is a very international city, and rich too, with shops for Gucci and Armani and Vuitton and all that expensive rubbish.

In the bar where we had our pre-dinner drinks, and in the busy and popular pizza restaurant where we ate our dinner, I insisted on speaking to the waiting-on staff in their own natural language, which is Italian. I was one of the very few customers doing that, most people there for eating and drinking were speaking English; my Italian is strong enough now that I can nearly always use it in preference to English and the staff, though surprised, are happy for me to do so. Sadly the same is not true of my French or German.

We ate pizzas. We had not had a pizza this trip in Italy, so decided we should in Italian-speaking Switzerland.  The pizzas were very good, but far, far, too salty, which is typically Italian, and which you don’t really notice until later in the night when you wake up with a pressing desire to run the taps in the bathroom dry.

The Americans ate a lasagne for him with a small glass of ‘lager’, and a spaghetti bolognese for her and a glass of red wine, though she ordered another glass of red wine later. We got the impression that they ordered these dishes as that is what they knew, they were a bit too cautious to be adventurous.

And they sat there, in excruciating silence, and Hilary said: ‘Why do they stay together? It’s so painful. If we ever get like that, promise me we’d part’. In saying this, of course, we find that we do have something to say to each other, so this is one of those self-referencing conversations, a bit in the class of ‘This page is blank’.

Many of the men in the bars and restaurants of Lugano were wearing suits, which makes me think it is a city with a large financial sector, a fair number looked Japanese.

Lugano also has a sizeable Muslim population, we saw many women in headscarves passing by as we were sitting outside having our drinks – for the rain had kindly stopped while we were in Lugano – including one young woman with the full black hide-your-mug works, she was with a boyfriend who was dressed in a western-style shirt and jeans, though with a Middle-Eastern appearance. He came over and said, ‘When I try to kiss my girlfriend, I get a gobfull of grubby black canvas, is this how it is supposed to be?’ No he didn’t, I made that up.

Lost Car Keys

That we were able to get to our hotel in San Bonifacio this evening had some elements of good fortune about it, as at a service station on the motorway between Rimini and Bologna on the way there I accidentally threw the car key into the waste bin.

This came about because we had overstocked on bread at the house. This meant that we decided to buy some cheese and tomatoes to go with it, and eat a picnic lunch on our way north.

As it was raining when we stopped for lunch, which it was pretty-much all day, we made our picnic in the car, and I think that somehow I dropped the car key into the bits of discarded cheese skin and tomato stalk when I was making up the sandwich. At the end of our lunch I threw our debris into the nearby bin, and then got back in the car.

No car key. It kind of dawned on me pretty quickly what I had done, and then we were blessed with two pieces of good fortune; the first was that it was a regular waste bin, not one of those that disappears into an invisible pit sunk deep in the ground. The second fortunate happenstance was that the bin had recently been emptied, this meant that it had a clean plastic liner in it and not very much waste. I was therefore able to pull the liner up and retrieve the key from various bits of rotting vegetable. On Hilary’s insistence I went to the toilets to wash the key and my hands, and then we could be on our way again. A middle-aged Italian couple watched this happening with evident mirth.

Lazy Ken

We converse with Gabriele in Italian. We converse with everyone here in Italian – Saturday 26 April 2014.

Gabriele asks if Hilary and I will join him to visit Ken and Linda. Ken and Linda are a retired couple who originate from the north of England and have lived in this area of Italy for seven years. We wonder why Gabriele is so keen we should accompany him and his wife and son on this visit, for we have only ever met Ken and Linda once before.

There are a few false starts, first it was going to be Wednesday afternoon, but then no, Gabriele had to work Wednesday, maybe Thursday. Thursday passed with no word from Gabriele, then he turned up on the doorstep, could we make Friday? In the end it was Saturday afternoon when Gabriele, Grazia, Simone, Hilary and I squeezed ourselves into Gabriele’s silver Opel Corsa for a trip to visit Ken and Linda.

Wouldn’t they like to go in our car? More room. No, Gabriele will drive.

The Corsa drives down into the valley and turns left past D.U.M. There as usual stands Ricky and I give him a wave, but he does not see us as he does not recognise the car. I explain about Ricky to Gabriele and Grazia. I notice on our return from visiting Ken and Linda, Gabriele takes a more circuitous route, bypassing D.U.M.

We get the reason why we’ve been invited when we get there; Ken and Linda speak only the barest few words of Italian; we are there as translators.

They weren’t expecting us. Gabriele says he’d phoned, he probably had, but Ken will not have understood properly what Gabriele was saying. Gabiele had to shout to gain someone’s attention: ‘Kenna! Kenna!’ Seems we wake Ken and Linda from their afternoon nap.

Ken and Linda’s house is on the sides of a valley, down a rough and rutted steep track from the road that leads up to Falerone. The Corsa got down it with five people in, but we did not risk it getting up so laden. The house is quite remote, not large, they have a swimming pool in the garden, which Linda describes as an expensive luxury and a mistake. Small bright green lizards scuttle about the rockery, Ken and Linda frequently see wild boar and deer in the fields below them, they are kept awake at night by the croaking of the frogs in the stream below, and periodically they have to deal with snakes that they find in annoying places such as wrapped round the pump for their swimming pool.

But despite being in Italy full-time for the past seven years, Neither Ken nor Linda can really hold a conversation in Italian, and in this they are by no means unusual with the Brits who live either full- or part-time roundabouts. We by contrast, after a fashion, can; yet we’re only here for a few weeks each year.

Why is it then, that Hilary and I can speak considerably more and better Italian than nearly every other Brit in the region? We think one reason is that we live in a village; if you live in the countryside as Ken and Linda do you might see no one for days on end. You have to get in your car for your shopping and so will tend to go to a supermarket where you can silently pick things off the shelves. We by contrast walk to the local shops and have to ask for things and talk to people on the way there and back.

But perhaps the biggest reason is our motivation for being here. We bought our house in Italy for a very clear reason: it was to learn something of life in a different culture, and by being here to learn about that in some depth. To do that you really have to learn something of the language, for the language and its intonations are part of what makes people think the way they do.

There are many different reasons why British people live for all or part of the year in this part of the world, but very few of these people, or possibly even none at all, share the same motivation as us. Many would say that they like the open space, sunshine, the relatively low-cost booze. Many say, too, that they like the people, they find them kind and helpful and characterful, which indeed they are. Some say they have a kind of love affair with Italy. But that does not mean they see the need to learn much of the language, or, as you often hear them say, they would love to but find learning the language too difficult.

It is difficult. Very difficult. But still needs doing if you are to be able to communicate effectively and learn something new every day.

Gabriele finds Ken amusing and calls him pigro. I say ah, yes, I know that word but cannot just at this moment think of the correct English translation. Pigro, pigro, hmmm it’ll come to me. Probably I’ll wake up in the night saying, ‘Ah yes, that’s it, I remember now. Of course’.

Pigro means lazy. I chicken out. I cannot tell Ken that Gabriele is calling him lazy for in English that is not something you would laughingly and affectionately call someone. Presumably it is OK in Italian. I simply lie that I cannot remember the meaning of the word. Later on in the conversation Gabriele refers to Ken’s pigranza, laziness, but I am on the ball, I say to Gabriele that there’s that word again, the one I don’t know and will have to wake up in the night with a sudden recall. I try to think of a word in English that gets over the idea that Gabriele is trying to put across, but oh dear, I just cannot think of one.

At this meeting Hilary does really well, both of us are doing something approaching simultaneous translation between English and Italian – albeit not with complex technical words. Gabriele and his wife Grazia know that Hilary has Alzheimer’s but possibly do not recognise that that might make remembering Italian words difficult, and in fact this meeting seems to have been very positive for Hilary’s language recall, though she is not sure she could do it again.

On our return home from visiting Ken and Linda, as part of the winding detour, we call in at a garden centre, for Grazia has to get some plants for a do or function they are attending the following day, the Sunday. We travel back up the hill from the shop with blooms perched precariously on our laps. They’re a funny lot, Italians, complex. You can call them all manner of things, though whatever epithets they might attract, never would you ever think of pigro!

A Dusty Stroll On the Lungomare

The promenade at Rimini – Friday 11 April 2014. The wind was blowing up dusty sand from the beach while the hotel staff were beginning to open up their beach chalets for the summer season, newly-painted benches being wheelbarrowed across the road in one direction, and heavy weights – used to hold things down a bit in the winter – wheelbarrowed in the other.

And we pondered on how Rimini was perhaps the first overseas package destination for British tourists in the 1950s or early 60s, and how we are fairly sure it still does feature in some British holiday brochures, and how it is now heavily frequented by Russians; most tourist signs are in Italian, English and Russian, and whether all those hotels can really fill up in summer, maybe they do during August, and how awful it all is really, though the old town of Rimini is actually very attractive.

A Spa and a Immigrant

Hotel delle Rose, Montebello Terme, 11 April 2014. Before breakfast the next morning we tried the ‘wellbeing’ walk in the grounds, that we had seen described on the hotel map, which would have been all of about ten minutes had we been able to march straight round it. Every few dozen yards there was a signpost describing an exercise you should do: bending and touching the toes; or swinging the arms left and right above the head; activities that we obediently tried, but unfortunately this did not last for many attempts as the information posts began to thin out from what showed on the map and then the path itself disappeared, having been dug up by a recently-passing tractor. Pondering for a moment that we are after all in Italy we made our way back to the hotel for breakfast.

Breakfast was superb, with Parma ham, which seeing as how we were near Parma was most appropriate, and a whole Parmesan cheese that you could cut chunks off, which seeing as we were near both Parma and Reggio Emilia seemed equally appropriate, The coffee was very good too. And all this for €89 per night B&B and swimming pools for two – I think this was an over-60s price, seemed a bargain; we’re pondering a return visit with longer stay.

The previous evening when we arrived at the hotel, among the people standing and sitting around outside was a black man. I did not give too much thought to this at the time as why shouldn’t there be? He looked a little overdressed for the occasion but then perhaps he was just a bit cold.

The man was sitting on the bench outside when we went for our morning walk and I was a bit wary of saying buon giorno for fear of being asked for money. This intuition proved to be well-founded, for when we were paying the bill he was sitting inside the reception area, on an armchair opposite the reception desk, or opposite one of the reception desks, for this being Italy there are of course, two.

Seeing me look at the man the receptionist raised her eyes heavenward. ‘He sits here every day?’, I asked. She replied that he did, and it was something of a problem for the hotel. ‘There is no work for him to do?’, I asked. ‘No’, she most firmly replied, ‘It is difficult, very difficult’.

I got the idea that the man is an immigrant, possibly from Somalia by the look of him, and he has found that by sitting around in the hotel reception he can keep warm. Possibly some people give him a euro out of kindness from time to time.

But the hotel management are going to have to throw him out sooner or later, and especially if any other immigrants latch on to the idea – fortunately for him and for the hotel it is quite a remote spot. But, this being Italy, they have sympathy for the poor chap, and being Italians they do not want to be unkind. But it cannot last, they’ll have to bite the bullet sooner or later. Though maybe I’m just looking at this purely from a British perspective.