Strawberry birthday shortcakes
Today, I live in Bergamo. This weekend, I’ll likely be moving to Milan, but because it’s a long story and because it seems that few events adhere to my elaborate schedules, I’ll leave it for another day.
Bergamo is home to polenta taragna and, conveniently, my boyfriend Filippo. I moved here last Tuesday to be with him –and in order to stay out of trouble, I have begun studying a distance-education MSc in Sustainable Development offered by Imperial College London (details of which can be read by clicking on the first selection under “DELINKCIOUS” in the left margin).
I was going to link you back to maps in previous posts to avoid taking up too much time describing my surroundings here, but was embarrassed to find that I have never included any in the past! So, for background purposes only, I’ll lean on my usual crutches: linking you to a Wikipedia summary and stealing someone else’s map.
And, in a pesky attempt to confuse you further, I’ll zestify this entry with photos taken during my 6-week holiday at home. My parents’ digital camera turned out to be more useful than I ever could’ve imagined, and I’m now brainstorming around ways to save my pennies and/or hock any non-essential belongings to afford something similar.
Despite having less than a week of la dolce vita under my belt, there are already a few interesting anecdotes to report.
Ok, Wednesday and Thursday weren't that interesting –I slept most of the day on Wednesday, walked down to the gorgeous ancient village library in the late afternoon, then came home to find that Filippo had run away from work early so we could hang out. I unpacked a bit on Thursday and started opening the 12 kilos of books that arrived before I did –everything’s a bit daunting at first glance, but once I've structured myself a schedule and settled into a static nest, the work should be manageable. The readings are more inter-disciplinary than I anticipated –ranging from socioeconomics (i.e. “The broken promise of NAFTA”) to detailed analysis of patterns in species richness (i.e. vegetation diversity and environmental heterogeneity indexes)!
Dad bought Julie and me routers so that our new computers could be the fully-functional wireless wonders they are destined to be, but it turns out that using it over here may be harder than any of us thought. Ferrari and Prada aside, it seems that Italy is firmly wedged in the Dark Ages for many things –cable modems don't exist at all, and you can only access ADSL via dial-up (for which you pay by the minute because there's no such thing as a flat monthly phone fee in Europe). Some of Filippo’s cousins have promised to look into it for me…if anyone out there has any suggestions, please bring ‘em on.
On Friday, I had the intention of whipping to the police station to get my residency permit, then spending the bulk of the day studying...well, nothing happened as planned. First of all, in Italy they try to control air pollution by limiting which cars can drive in certain towns on certain days. So, Friday was the "evens", and Filippo's mom's (hereafter known as Franca) car's license plate ends in an odd number, so we had to drive to the Bergamo city limit (he technically lives in the municipality next door) then take the bus the rest of the way to the police station. When Franca and I arrived at the station, it seriously looked worse than any third-world country's holding cell I could imagine; there was a mad mess of people of all colours and languages crammed up against the corner where you get let in to talk to an immigration officer, with several armed police people screaming incoherently at everyone. No instructions or directions posted anywhere, and the police weren't screaming helpful messages of any type, just screaming.
Anyway, this is going to be the longest post of my life if I continue in such detail. Let me just say that we eventually managed to speak to an immigration person, were told that I was missing 3 things for my application, bussed back to the car and collected the 3 things in various locations of the city, then went back to the police to finish things up. We made it through the circus of people to the window again, and were told that we needed one additional thing that we didn't have, so Franca told me to sit down while she ran to get it (the office was closing for the weekend at 12:30, and we had less than 30 min). I waited and waited, and suddenly a woman walked into the hall and shouted in Italian "is there a Kim here?" then told me that Franca was in the process of having an asthma attack on the sidewalk outside. Although she denies it, Franca has really bad asthma, and the combination of her stress from dealing with me and physically running from her car back to the police station had done her in. I called Filippo, some passers-by called an ambulance, and we were off to the hospital. Once she had been given oxygen and calmed down a bit, she was fine.
It’s funny how, through all this, I noticed that there are no parking charges anywhere. We could leave the car in a park-and-ride (to take the bus) for free, and at the hospital all parking is free as well. I asked Filippo how much it would cost for her ambulance ride (because I remember it being about $200 in my accident-prone past) and he looked at me like I was crazy. How is it that Canadians are among the most highly-taxed people in the free world, but still are charged buckets of user fees?!?!
Sorry.
Just to explain: the photo above illustrates a laundry mishap involving my favourite pink sweater. You'll be relieved to learn that this towel-stuffing technique saved the day.
Back to business: the weekend was filled with pizza, beer, blinding sunshine and pale blue skies –in the sun, the temperature must reach the mid-teens, but there’s patches of snow on parts of the ground that sit in the shade all day.
We went on an epic (14km) bike ride and rollerblade on Saturday, and even SPF 15 didn’t keep me from getting sunburned. When we were nearly home, Filippo pointed out a huge cheese shop called “La Cascina Alpina” which carried more cheese than I’ve ever seen in my life, but apparently only stocks cheeses from this region with a few extras brought in from around the country. We bought substantial chunks of 5 different types of the most delicious cheeses you could imagine, and the bill came to €12.42!!!
My permesso di soggiorno was successfully processed this morning, so I am now free to enjoy affordable dairy products (don’t get me started about the yogurt) and subsidized social services for the next year. And on that note, I think it’s about time for a pre-dinner snack!
