#75: Temperamental Italian Plumbing
Ciao Nonni,
I hope all is well back home.
I can finally taste the approaching spring season in the air, and it is very exciting.
Winter in Italy is fantastic in a lot of ways - primarily the lack of tourist crowds, and the experience of exploring il bel paese on crisp, sunny days with absolutely no one around. But in Lucca particularly, it is also quite wet and grey a lot of the time. And the reduced hours of sunlight, combined with a brutal 10 hour time difference to Australia, mean we spend a lot of our time awake in the dark.
The Queenslander buried deep within my soul does struggle with this. Especially when my social media feeds are full of our friends and family back home spending long summer days at the beach.
But as I said, spring is on the way. The mornings are lighter, and it also isn't getting dark at 5pm anymore, so the post-school pick up playground visits are back on.
The actual start date of spring, however, remains a mystery to me. As previously discussed, it has something to do with some solstice or another. I don't know, and I care not to learn. I will stage my own personal protest at the insane concept of starting seasons on random days, instead of just the first day of the month.
With the improving weather, I've started to try to get outside for little jogs more often. While I have never been a runner, I have always enjoyed jogging for its simplicity and efficiency. And also for its ability to completely clear my mind. The last five years have been tough, as I've not been physically able to run as I used to. Two giant babies will do that. Only recently have I started to feel more comfortable back out there again. My outings are slow, and distances short, but I can finally say I'm starting to enjoy the experience again.
One run in particular stands out to me recently as a bit of a watershed moment. I have been plodding 5km around the walls of Lucca every week or so for a few months now, and while the run is objectively spectacular, it has quickly become familiar. I decided on a beautifully cool and sunny day to mix it up, and try a longer jog heading out of town along the huge stone aqueduct that brings water in from the mountains to the south of the town. The Acquedotto Nottolini.
The 5km around the walls often feels tough, but when running along a deserted track alongside, and then eventually up and actually on top of the aqueduct, I doubled my distance without even realising it. I felt like I was in an epic movie, Gladiator meets Rocky, with a stirring and momentous soundtrack playing in my head the entire time.
I returned home with a huge smile on my face, finally feeling like I had regained my love of the freedom of running.
Speaking of ancient plumbing, we've had another hilarious moment in our very Italian apartment.
It's well known that Italian wiring is not designed to withstand the use of multiple appliances at once. It's like the buildings of this country are conspiring against the population to keep us all from becoming too lazy and thoughtlessly consumeristic. I'm sure it is one of the main reasons why Italians are so much more aware of their consumption of all resources.
For us, the use of the oven at the same time as the washing machine is the limit, if you introduce even one more medium or large appliance into the mix the fuse will blow. When making a roast dinner the other day, David had to keep turning off the oven to use the blender or the microwave, and then turning it back on again. Anyone walking into the kitchen during this process would be yelled at to not open the oven, lest the heat escape while it was off.
The fuse boxes are located on the ground floor of our apartment building, so if we overload the poor system we have to traipse all the way down to flip it back again. Annoying under any circumstances, but particularly so if you're not dressed to leave the apartment at that moment.
A few nights ago we found a new way in which our house does not like to be stressed.
The kids take a bath most evenings, as we find it to be a great way to calm them down after dinner, before bedtime. Usually, when one parent is supervising bathtime, the other is doing the washing up from dinner.
Side note: our apartment is so old school Italian that it doesn't even have a dishwasher!
By the time the bath is finished, the dishes are usually washed and in the drying rack. But for some reason the other night, it happened that I was emptying the sink from doing the dishes at the same time that Dave pulled the plug to drain the bath. A bath that was unusually full as we'd let it run for a bit too long.
Only a few moments later, Raffy comes running into the kitchen to shout that there is water coming out of the floor.
Cue panic at this apocalyptic proclamation.
Water coming out of the floor? What does this mean? Is the bath overflowing? Is the toilet backed up? Are we also flooding poor Signora Maria's apartment below?!
We ran into the bathroom to find that, indeed, water was coming up out of the floor. There's a weird metal circle on the ground in the centre of the room, which has now been revealed as a loosely covered drain. I'd never really paid too much attention to it before.
Water was bubbling back up in great heaves and quickly filling the room. David replaced the plug in the bath, and luckily this stopped it. Thankfully it was a problem that we (he) could solve without having to call in an idraulico. Since then, we've been much more careful about draining multiple water reservoirs at once.
This now sits alongside my already obsessive vigilance of the kitchen sink - making sure that grease and other troublesome foods prone to causing blockages (like porridge scraps) are carefully scraped onto the organics bin instead of washed down the drain.
These Italian houses are temperamental. They do not like to be told what to do, and they are not interested in our demands to modernise. Do things our way, or we will revolt, they say. Much like the Italians themselves in a lot of ways...
Lots of love and hugs,
Kate
