#29: The Tourist Treatment
Ciao Nonni!
The prodigal husband has returned! I met David at the train station yesterday afternoon to help him carry the bags. I thought if he managed to lug them across three continents over 30 hours of travel, I could probably help him with the final 20 minutes! Ha.
While there, I had an interaction I hadn't had in a good few months.
When we first arrived in summer, we were very much lumped in with the hordes of sunburnt and obnoxious tourists by the local Italians. And fair enough too. We didn't know where we were going, we continually walked on the wrong side of people out of habit, and we failed time and time again to intuit by magic how to order and make payments in very busy bars and gelaterias. In short, we just generally got in the way.
As a result, we copped the occasional exasperated huff. And again, we deserved it. But since the summer crowds receded, and many of the local people in our area noticed that we'd somehow been left on the shore by the tide - we've been slowly transitioning from inconvenient blow-ins to occasionally mildly interesting, but often just largely ignored, foreigners living in town.
Until yesterday. I was at the station, as mentioned. David had four (!) bags of supplies from home, and so I grabbed two. By any measure, we looked like tourists.
As I was walking through the door to the station (which was clearly marked as an exit, not entry), a woman coming from outside rolled her eyes and tried to shove her way through ahead of me. Because I am the way I am, I didn't completely change course in response. I didn't feel inclined to reward such behaviour, and besides - the suitcase had a fair bit of momentum at that point.
So she pretty much crashed into me. We stood face to face in the doorway, neither willing to move.
Her response was to basically spit at me "Scusaaaa!" which is the exact equivalent of the highly passive aggressive English "Excuse me!" as you attempt to blame someone for getting in your way, by "apologising" for getting in theirs.
For once, my brain didn't go blank in the face of an Italian interaction. Instead it served me up an immediate "Scusa! É un'uscita, vedi?" which is bad Italian for "Excuse me! It's an exit, see?"
I've been riding high on her defeated humpf as she stalked off ever since.
In other less petty news, we've been celebrating Carnevale this week! Festivities kicked off on the weekend, with parades and performances all over the town. I took the two bambini down to our local piazza to watch a dance concert and magician act on Saturday afternoon. It was complete mayhem, but they loved it. Leo was absolutely fascinated by a woman on stilts. He could not stop looking at her!
Raffy, meanwhile, was most enamoured with the copious amounts of coriandoli (paper confetti) being thrown around. In Australia, confetti has been all but banned. Here, not so much. By the time we left, the ground was a good inch thick in small pieces of colourful paper. It looked like rainbow snow. As well as covering the piazza, it was also in all our hair and clothes. I'm still finding pieces around the place.
Thank you for sending David home safe and well. I'm so glad you two managed to catch up for lunch! He said you are looking exceptionally well, which makes me very happy.
All my love,
Kate
