#60: Italian Customer Service
Ciao Nonni,
Lucca has been taken over by preparations for the Comics and Games Festival that will happen next week. What this means is that every inch of space within the walls of the citta (that is not already occupied by a building of some sort) has been filled to bursting with huge white tents / marquees. This includes the beautiful piazzas, right through to car parks and children's playgrounds.
They have sprung up everywhere, like giant mushrooms after the rain.
There are very mixed feelings in Lucca about the gigantic festival, which takes place here each and every year.
On one hand, the economic inflows from the more than 200,000 attendees who buy tickets each day of the five day event are enormous.
On the other, life for anyone else in and around the town for about a month and a half is impacted. The preparations take a good 3-4 weeks, and the pack down afterwards is another couple of weeks. Not to mention the actual festival, during which the city is closed for entry to anyone who isn't either a ticket holder or a resident of the centre. For us, this means that schools are also shut for these days.
Last year we did as most residents of the centre did, and absconded elsewhere. We spent a very interesting few days in Genova. This year, however, being outside the walls and now in possession of our own little macchina, we have decided to stay and tough it out. Time will tell whether this is a good or very, very bad idea.
I will say that if you ARE going to have your town taken over by hordes of incomers, the type of people who attend a comics festival would be some of the best. Most of the people who come are giant nerds, and I say that with love. Everyone goes to extraordinary lengths to dress up as their favourite character (last year there were about one thousand Spidermen running around the city) and it is overwhelmingly a polite and family friendly crowd. Raffy is very excited to venture in one day and see all of the costumes.
In other news, David came home last night with a tale from the supermarket that had me crying tears of laughter.
While pasta is an everyday proposition in Italy, pizza is once a week. Ask any Italian this and they will agree.
Pizza is for Friday or Saturday night. We have happily fallen in step with this system, and have found an excellent little hole-in-the-wall pizzeria near our house. I will call to order, and they know it is me before I've even finished saying buonasera. Clearly not quite sounding like a native speaker just yet...
Anyway, I will admit that occasionally I miss a certain pizza topping that is absolutely forbidden here. I know that admitting this is basically a crime, but sometimes I just want a Hawaiin pizza.
When this craving becomes overwhelming, I sneak to the supermarket to buy a tin of pineapple and some pre-made pizza dough. I will use the self-serve checkout to avoid the judgement of the cashier. Once home, I will close all the shutters and commit (one of the many) ultimate crimes against Italian cuisine.
Last night we decided it was pizza night. It was also forecast to rain, so we chose to make pizza at home. But disastrously, we didn't have any pineapple. David stopped by the Esselunga on his way home from collecting the kids from school.
The issue was he couldn't find the tinned pineapple. He searched high and low, with no luck. Eventually, he decided that he'd rather run the gauntlet of Italian "customer service" than face my disappointment (wrath) if he returned home without it. He found one of the many staff wandering the aisles, and asked where he could find it.
The woman immediately regarded him with suspicion. And this is where the fun begins. In Australia, no matter how insane the request, the staff member would just point you in the right direction and ask you if you needed anything else. In Italy, no. Instead of simply telling him where to find the illicit food product, she responded with "why?".
David's mind went blank, and he couldn't quickly think of an acceptable response. Her frown deepened. He ummed and ahhed for a few awkward moments, before settling on the classic strategy of male domestic incompetence.
My wife told me to get it.
She tutted, and after a moment of hesitation, pointed him in the direction he needed to go. David said she seemed disappointed to have been robbed of the opportunity to scold him for wanting to put pineapple on a pizza.
This kind of interaction is pretty standard. The Italian interpretation of customer service is - I will give you my advice on the matter at hand, whether you want it or not, because I know more than you. As foreigners, the going-in assumption is that we know absolutely nothing and MUST BE TAUGHT. It is an entirely different version of helpful, one that would send an unsuspecting Australian into a complete tailspin.
I love our butcher. He is gruff and often moody, but the meat that he sells is phenomenal. We have an almost weekly ritual when I go in and order freshly minced meat. He asks me what it is for. I lie and say ragu. It's not that I'm ashamed of making very inauthentic Old El Paso-style burritos, it's just not a conversation I feel equipped to have in Italian. And so every week I am treated to a set of instructions on how to make the best ragu.
And to be fair, when I do make ragu it is amazing. He knows what he is talking about. Maybe one day I will confess, but I doubt it. And honestly, I suspect he knows it already.
All my love,
Kate
