At the Garage

After our encounter with the friendly mechanic at the Fiat garage in Via Corsico, Mr A. and I went back on Monday morning to drop "La Punto" off. (Because the word for car in Italian (macchina) is feminine, you use la even when the name of the car is masculine.) We met another mechanic, who was the one who actually ended up servicing the car and sat down to discuss prices with us. I had brushed up on some vocabulary this time and the guy was both very friendly and very professional. He gave us quotes for prices and an estimated time to do the work, remembering that it might take longer to order the parts for a British car, and when he heard that Mr A. was taking the car back to England for her MOT, we had a chat about the differences between the UK and Italian versions of the test. (In Italy, they only check the basics (brakes, lights, tyres etc) whereas in Britain, everything that worked in the car when it was new now has to be in working order to pass the test.) We arranged for the work to be done and when we went back on Tuesday to collect the car we found that he had also very kindly checked the oil and put air in the tyres to prepare the car for her long journey home.

On the way back into Milan we stopped off at a tyre place to get a quote for replacing the two front tyres and had a very different experience. The mechanic who greeted us had a big smile and a loud chuckle and looked unnervingly like a clown in his red overalls. There were no other cars in the garage, only about three other mechanics with nothing to do. The conversation went something like this:

Me: How much will it cost to change the tyres on the car?
Clown: Hmm, let me have a look and see how many need changed. (Something in Italian that I didn't understand.)
Me: I'm sorry, I didn't understand that.
Clown makes a gesture that clearly means, "turn the steering wheel so that I can see the tyres." Mr A. opens the driver's door and turns the wheel. Clown stops peering in the passenger side of the windscreen and starts to laugh.
Clown: Ahahahahahaha! It's an English car! The steering wheel is on the other side! Hahaha!
Clown finally manages to stop laughing. Mr A is beginning to look worried.
Me: So how much will it cost for the tyres?
Clown looks up price list behind the counter.
Clown: Well, you've got Michelin tyres but we're out of these. I could do another make for 220 euros.
Me: Mr A., he says 220 euros.
Mr A. starts to get back into the car.
Mr A.: The guy at the Fiat garage was only 200 euros. Let's go.
Me (to clown) : Thanks, but another garage gave me a better quote. Goodbye.
Clown: Ah, just hold on a minute. I can give you a cheaper offer with another make of tyres. How much did the other garage say?
Me: 150, including labour. (Afterwards, I decided I should have said 100).
Clown: OK. I can do it for 140 euros.
Me: He says 140.
Mr A. (still looking worried): OK, let's go for it.
Clown 1 calls Clown 2 over to get started on the work. Clown 2 gets in the passenger side of the car. He passes me my handbag, which is on the floor, then realises something is wrong and starts to laugh hysterically.
Clown 2: It's an English car! I was wondering where the steering wheel was! Ahahahahah!
Clown 2 eventually stops laughing, gets in the driver's side of the car and starts the engine.
Clown 2: This feels really strange. I don't know if I can drive this thing. Puts his foot on the accelerator. Get out of the way guys, I'M COMING!!!!


3 days later... The car has arrived in England. The tyres are still OK. The new brake pads that they ripped us off by telling us they were selling us 4 instead of 2 seem to still be attached to the car. Mr A's hair is not yet grey. And once again, I got a lot of education and an amusing story out of the experience.

Bits and Pieces

A couple of weeks ago, my internet key broke. After all the tears and frustration of getting one that worked in my apparently aging computer and figuring out how not to get ripped off by Alice Mobile, it just broke. I took it out of my bag one day, plugged it into the computer and the little green light just didn't come on. The bit that plugs in feel too loose, so I figure it was probably all my own fault because I didn't look after it properly. There's no way of replacing it that would be worthwhile for the six weeks or so before I move to France, so at the moment I am internetless and scrounging friends, school and the internet cafe in a bid to stay in touch with the world, because it couldn't have happened at a worse time. I need to book flights, arrange to ship my stuff to Paris and plan a holiday for me and my mum, and this has really brought home to me how dependent I am on the internet for information and communication. I'm sure all of these things can be done in other ways, but it's just so much more difficult. (The best places I've found for internet here are the major bookshops. Although Mondadori is closer for me, I tend to use FNAC because although the internet cafe is open all day at Mondadori, they only sell credit at certain times, and never at weekends. Trust Italy to make even the internet inconvenient!)


Anyway, apart from finding myself temporarily on the wrong side of the digital divide, here are a few of the things that have been happening in the past two weeks.

Summer has definitely come. The school year has ended, it's 30 degrees outside, and the comune (town hall) is shutting for it's 3 month long holiday. It's only open for 5 hours a day at the best of times, so I guess 3 months of being completely closed won't make much difference.

With the end of the school year have come lots of goodbyes and farewell parties. Two of my favourites have been at the bar of the Mondadori bookshop, which has a terrace which is open to the public all the time and another one for private parties, and at La Toscana, a bar and restaurant on the Corso Porta Ticinese. I also attended a Partyamo event for the first time. Partyamo is a social group organised by a Scottish guy called Steve who has been living in Italy for 15 years and that lets foreigners and Italians meet and speak in different languages.

On Friday, my friend and I went shopping in Nadine, which is one of my favourite shops in Milan. She was exchanging a skirt and I actually didn't let myself even try anything on because I was scared I would want to buy everything! Italian fashion, I will miss you...

The highlight of Saturday was quite definitely a visit to the car wash. Mr A needed his car repaired before driving it back to the UK this week, and we were actually looking for a garage but ended up in the car wash by mistake. 4 euros bought us a good half our of fun with the high pressure hoses, the foam brush and a special machine for washing the floor mats, and weirdly enough the place, which had room for about 30 cars, was full of other people doing the exact same thing. It was great. Then we actually did find the Fiat garage (on Via Corsico) and met a very friendly mechanic who, despite the fact that he was closing up, came out into the street to look at the car and listened very patiently to my attempt to explain the problem without any technical vocabulary and then offered to let us skip the queue for repairs first thing on Monday morning.

And now there are just a few days of packing, cleaning and paperwork before Mr A goes back to the UK for a few weeks and I get ready to entertain my mum, who's arriving for a week's holiday on Tuesday, and enjoy Italy like a tourist again!

Paris, je t'aimerai

A while back, I wrote a post about staying in Milan for another year with a list of reasons why, despite my suffering respiratory system, this was a good idea. Well, that's changed. For reasons that I'm not going to go into here, I'm leaving my fabulous life in Milan for what I hope will be an equally fabulous one in (or at least near to) la ville des lumières.

It wasn't an easy decision to make. I was never planning to stay in Italy for ever, but another year to appreciate it would have been nice. My Italian is not as good as I would like it to be yet and I haven't seen half the things I wanted to see yet. I have lots of friends here, a nice flat and a great life. Most of all, I have Mr A, who will still be staying here for at least another year. (Does EasyJet do airmiles?)

So, although it may sound crazy, I'm excited about living in France but I'm not over the moon. It's a great opportunity and I intend to make the most of it, but I've lived in France before and this was not quite the future I had planned for myself. Sometimes, though, life just deals you a crappy hand and if the best way to cope with that involves moving to one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, I guess that's not all bad. I'll try to come back with some more enthusiasm next time!

Camping at Lake Garda

Last Saturday afternoon at around four o'clock, I was lying on a sun lounger beside an azure blue swimming pool, drinking a mint granita, watching the thermometer fluctuate between 29 and 30 degrees and vaguely contemplating when to go for my next swim. Beside the pool, a wide avenue of perfectly pruned trees led down to the lake shore, where earlier in the day we had been relaxing on the beach, jumping off the jetty into refreshingly cold water and buying ice cream from a boat instead of a van. In real life, this is what other people do once a year on holiday. In Italy, it's what you do on any June weekend when you feel like it and you can do it less than two hours' drive from your house.

Admittedly, we were lucky. Not every campsite in Italy has lakeside pitches fenced in by box hedges where you can park a car and pitch two tents before you go off to shop at the market, eat in the restaurant, drink in the bar, or go and swim in the 25 metre pool. But the Camping Lido at Lazise does, and that was why we went there.

After our laid back day at the campsite on Saturday, we went to Sirmione on Sunday. Unfortunately, so did most of the rest of the population. Sirmione is a historical town with Roman ruins, city walls and a castle that sticks out into Lake Garda on a peninsula on the southern shore. It's a gorgeous place with a lakeside promenade, lots of little shops and the most extravagant gelaterie I've ever seen. You can't drive in the town, so after getting as far as the city walls without finding a parking space, we ended up doing a few 3 point turns in tiny car parks and parking a good half hour's walk from the old town centre. Once we were there, however, it was actually very calm. There were lots of people, but most of them, like us, were just strolling, sunbathing and swimming. Despite being slathered in sun cream for most of the weekend, I had caught a bit too much sun on Saturday, so one of the highlights for me was being able to buy a big floppy straw sunhat with a ribbon. Mr A was not particularly convinced that this was a good look, but I decided it was better than sunburn. And I can wear it wherever we end up going next weekend too...

Parco di Monza

From my flat in Milan, I can get to the metro by turning right at the corner of my block. I avoid the eyes of the shady men who hang around my street and step carefully among the rubbish on a dusty, smelly street to arrive at the metro, where battered looking grey carriages rattle through the tunnels in the belly of the city. If I get off at the Porta Garibaldi station, I can walk along underground corridors in a station where few of the ticket machines work and the office isn't open on a Sunday and get on a graffiti covered train to Monza, ten minutes ride from Milan.

Things are different in Monza. Outside the station, the streets look a little bit scruffy, but if you follow the main road you soon arrive at a pedestrianised high street with expensive shops, flowers, and a fountain that sparkles in the summer sun. On a Sunday, people stand around outside the beautiful churches in expensive looking designer clothes (I find this weird) and drink post-communion coffee on the terrace of a bar.

If you keep walking, the atmosphere changes. There are people, many people, and especially families on bikes. After a while, you realise that most of them are going in the same direction. If you go with the Sunday afternoon flow, you will find yourself in the Parco di Monza.

The park is a proper Sunday afternoon place. It has a large villa with landscaped gardens, statues and a lake, where you can take a leisurely stroll. Further out, it becomes wilder, with forest trails where people go running. There are some wide roads and tarmac paths which are perfect for gentle cycling or rollerblading. Further out still, there are pony rides, bike hire and fields where people have barbecues.

I went there one Sunday and spent three wonderful hours wandering, rollerblading and reading under the trees.

Then I went back to the station and got a nasty surprise. Even in Monza, the ticket office was closed and none of the ticket machines were working. I guess it's not so far from Milan after all.

It You Don't Laugh...

I had a good chuckle to myself today while reading the online version of the Corriere della Sera in my lunch break today. Headline news was, of course, the latest in the Berlusconi saga. The Corriere della Sera is one of the more reputable newspapers and has taken an anti-Berlusconi stance on several big issues, so I was interested to read what it had to say.

Just in case you have been hiding under a stone for the past couple of months, here is a quick summary of the story so far.

Back in April, Berlusconi invited several potential candidates for the European elections to his party headquarters. Among those on his list were an actress, a daytime TV presenter, a former contender for Miss Italia, and an ex Big Brother contestant, none of whom had any political experience.

This, however, was only the beginning of the scandal. In May, Berlusconi's wife, Veronica Lario, filed for divorce, accusing him of “consorting with minors” after he attended the 18^th birthday party of Noemi Letizia, who was, he claimed, the daughter of one of his friends, and presented her with an expensive necklace. Since then, Noemi has given interviews claiming that Berlusconi is something of a grandfather figure to her and that she hopes that he will set her on the road to a successful political career. La Repubblica, however, then published an article in which Noemi's ex-boyfriend claimed that Berlusconi had got to know her after seeing photos of her in a casting book that was accidentally left on a dinner table by her agent.

All of this has been reported on in the national press, but the harshest criticisms have come from outside of Italy, where the Italian electorate's reluctance to reject Berlusconi seems less comprehensible. As a result, as the Corriere reported today, Berlusconi's foreign affairs minister has just made a speech in which he condemns the foreign press for its interest in gossip and for lacking the moral values of the Italian papers. Which might just about be believable if a) Berlusconi were not the owner of three television channels specialising in directing camera angles up women's skirts and b) if he were referring to the Daily Mirror and the Sun . It all becomes somewhat less convincing, however, when you have watched the said TV channels for about 20m minutes and when you learn that the main target of the attack is the Financial Times.

Berlusconi's own response to the situation was to say, “Mussolini had troops of Black Shirts, while I, according to the newspapers … have troops of starlets... at least it's a little better.” Well, perhaps, but is that the best that Italy can do?

Montalto and the Oltrepo Pavese

Who would have guessed that all of this was just 1 hour's drive from Milan? The Oltrepo Pavese is a wine producing region and you can stop off at numerous little production places by the side of the road and taste and buy wine. Personally, though, I'd go again just for the flowers!