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.