Repeat Customers May we recommend, if you find yourself a stranieri in Italy, when you go to any establishment and the product is good and the service okay – return. Italians have a great memory for faces and I can’t remember ever not being recognized on the 2nd or 3rd visit to an establishment. By the 3rd visit, you are treated like royalty as they cherish repeat customers. Tipping There is no expectation to receive a tip in Italy as people are paid a living wage. However, in tourist areas they have been spoiled and are more than willing to take one. I mean, if you hand someone money, most people will take it. But beware of offending in non-tourist areas and restaurants serving mostly locals. We have actually had two restaurants refuse to take a penny more than the bill. One benefit of the no tipping approach, which is seen some places in the U.S., is that you get better service. One waiter may take your order, another may serve you, any waiter that passes your table will remove whatever items you are finished with, a different one may check to see if you want dessert, and yet another may bring your check. Whomever is available at the time is at your service. The Check Slow service is good service here. Outside the tourist area restaurants do not expect to turn their tables in an evening and Italians do not plan to leave their tables in less than two or three hours. Italians do not arrive for dinner until 8:30 PM earliest and it is quite common for them to arrive after 10 PM on a weeknight with small children. So in tourist areas a restaurant could have a sitting at 7:30 PM of tourists and another sitting of Italians at the same table at 10 PM if they played it right. You can spend all night in a restaurant and you will not get the check until you ask for it – it is considered impolite to rush the customers – and, hopefully, the longer customers stay the more courses they will order. Alcohol Alcohol is everywhere, and I mean everywhere. We went into a bookstore the...

The other day Larry and I decide to get out of town and take the train to the beach community on the Adriatic directly east, San Benedetto. Now when someone says “go to the beach” to me, I’m in my swimsuit sunscreen in hand ready to enjoy the sun and sand. When I asked Larry whether he wanted to wear his swimsuit or carry it, I was informed this was just a scouting trip. Somewhat deflated I had him promise we could at least have a long relaxed seafood lunch by the ocean. We get an early start, grab our cappuccino and cornetto at our now favorite cafe, and walk to the bus stop to look for a bus to the train station. It is not obvious which bus goes to the train station, so Larry (in his improving daily Italian) asks a sweet old lady if the #1 bus goes to the station. She said yes, but in a round-about way. We figured great, a free tour – and it was. However, we never saw the train station and got a sinking feeling when we realized we were the only passengers left on the bus and the driver just go off and disappeared. Clearly we were at the end of the line and in a town somewhere in the outskirts of Ascoli that we never heard of. So we wait for the driver to return from his shopping and do what we should have done in the beginning, ask the driver which is the bus to the train station. He tells us that bus will be along in 40 minutes, so we sit on the wall and wait. Also remembering that if you are in doubt and ask the driver, he’ll also let you know when to get off. (No, they do not have signs or recorded announcements on the buses to let you know upcoming stops.) Lesson learned, but we now walk to the train station because it’s faster. Mind you the bus only gets as close as two blocks from the station, which is why we missed it before. We were expecting the bus to pull up to or at least within sight of the station....

A lot has happened and we haven’t been in town two weeks yet. It is Thursday of our second week and we applied for a checking account at BNL nine working days ago. Busy with the whole apartment thing, we had managed to stay out of the bank an entire week to let them work it out. Having received no phone call, as promised, Larry is beside himself. We get the fact that they need to be sure we are not terrorists or money laundering, but it’s just a checking account! Thursday morning we dress to impress and go into the bank. We walk into the office of one of the gentlemen that helped us the first day. He looks at us sheepishly and says he still has not heard anything from Rome (which we translate into no one wanted to be the one to tell us the bad news). At this point it seems we are asking for something “outside the box” and no one in this office has the authority to act independently. He honestly feels bad he can’t make it happen. We tell him we will just have to go to another bank, and he agrees that is probably the best course. Well now Larry is really worried wondering what bank to start over with. I mentioned before that we aren’t particularly religious but as we are walking through the Piazza del Popolo that day the door to the Church of Saint Frances is open and Larry decides we should go in. We had planned to tour the 26 churches in the city once we had “business” done, but had not stepped foot in a single one of them until now. Coincidence? I wonder. That afternoon we had an appointment with Cinzia V., to sign some paperwork and we explain our dilemma and ask if she has any suggestions where we might try next. She makes a couple phone calls and in walks a nice friend of Cinzia’s who speaks English and works for Pfizer. Then the four of us walk to the Bank of Rome (UniCredit/Banca di Roma) across Piazza Roma and into the office of the Regional Manager. Cinzia begins to explain what we...

Via San Guiliano

By Larry & Arlene on Jul 29, 2013 in Blog | 5 comments

We had been looking at apartments for rent in the area on the internet for several months, and walked all over Ascoli in the previous week, so we weren’t going into this totally uninformed. We had typed up a list of what we definitely needed, in order of importance, and what we wanted to pay. About fourth on the list was “light and airy.” Our temporary apartment is wonderful, conveniently located, very thoughtfully furnished and equipped (to include an expresso machine). However, it is essentially a beautiful stone cave with one window and a door. On the hottest days it stays very cool but is lit mostly by artificial light and we have to close the one window most nights due to the street noise. I am an unashamed spoiled southern Californian used to large quantities of sunshine. I told Larry that if we had to live for the long-term in a place this dark I was certain to fall into a deep depression and might kill him in his sleep. The requirement of “light and airy,” not surprisingly, moved to the top of our list. Cinzia V. zeroed in immediately on a place that was everything we wanted and much more. The price was 100 Euros more than we wanted to pay, but we agreed to see it that afternoon. In the meantime Cinzia V. called on a friendly British client of her’s to join us and serve as a translator. He had actually looked at the apartment in his search so he was familiar with it. We leave Cinzia V.’s office on Piazza Roma (a small piazza between the two larger ones) and walk a very few blocks to Via San Giuliano named after the church at the end of the street. The first thing we notice is that the street in front of the building is blocked to vehicles, yes! The second is that the outside wall of the apartment building is covered with a “liberty style” fresco from the early 1900’s, kool, and there is a huge south-facing window, way kool. Then the owner of the apartment greets us to let us in. Once again, he was right out of central casting – 80ish, short,...

Friends of friends, a good way to get things done most any place in the world. But in Italy, it is pretty much the ONLY way to get things done. Research, planning, attention to detail and persistence have gotten us pretty far in daily life in the U.S. Italians, so we were told by one person, don’t really trust people they don’t know. So planning and detail won’t overcome that. Persistence, so we discovered, is actually viewed by the Italians as a bit offensive. I guess it is perceived as indicating they are not living up to our expectations. So here we must learn to deal with domani (tomorrow) and go with the flow. A real challenge for two control freaks but not totally unexpected. Larry and I are not particularly religious but there have been times during this last year that we were sure some force was guiding us and clearing the way for this grand adventure. We seem to have an equivalent here in Italy which we call our “Italian Angel”, which seemed appropriate in this setting, and she has been working double-time since we arrived in Ascoli. On our second business day in Italy our mission was to find where to obtain monthly bus passes. After a couple misses we were directed to a branch of the comune located on Piazza Arringo that handles some transportation issues. We enter and ask the first person we see if she speaks English. She refers us to a very pleasant gentleman, Mario, who doesn’t speak English either (but we discover later he lives upstairs from our landlord next door to us and is an expert adviser on local restaurants). He takes us to his boss, Cinzia, our first in-the-flesh Italian Angel, and we instantly hit it off. She speaks some English and understands much more and her attitude is “it’s good, we need the practice.” She explained that even though Italians must take two years of English in school, since there are few English speakers in Ascoli, they quickly loose their skills. When we told her we were settling in Ascoli she looked at us and asked the inevitable question “why?” When we told her because there were no...

It is a unique experience to finally arrive in a distant place where we have chosen to live when the decision to live here was reached from far away. The choosing process was done in a very contemporary way; research was largely done on the Internet. A combination of Google searches, augmented by Email exchanges with English speaking Ex-Patriots in the region, and not to mention the on-the-ground explorations via Google Earth, created a sense of familiarity with the prospective new home. But as everyone knows in advance, being there in person adds the final and most critical dimension. Carried forward by the momentum of so many decisions and actions, such as selling a home and deciding what little is to go on the pilgrimage and what is worth storing, is being carried on a tide of ones own initiating. It needed to be decided at the outset whether or not the commitment to follow through was really there. Because once the process was set in motion it became very difficult to turn back. There is a wonderful core element in our marriage; our communication with each other is easy, fluid and includes the ability to talk feely about dreams and wishes for the future. A common theme in so many of our travels has been to ask, “I wonder what it is like to really live here?” In our travels, we gravitated from the use of hotels to a preference for living independently in rented apartments and also to having more direct experience with the people of a new place by choosing to stay in an Italian Agriturismo. We have found more in depth, direct personal experience of new places much richer than seems possible in being a ‘tourist’ in the more traditional sense. That inclination has fuelled the desire to immerse ourselves in places we have had limited time to really understand and experience in depth in the past. And now, life in Italy has begun. In over about a year, we have gone from, “What would you think about . . ?”, to stepping off a sleepless, overnight flight into Rome and having our hired van and driver deliver us to our new home town –...

Sitting on the piazza people watching is one of our favorite pastimes and many fashion observations have been made. First, I must say the Italians (young, old, single married, attractive or not so) work very hard at looking good, staying fit and on their game, plus they are much more secure with their sexuality and nudity. When it comes to fashion, you will see every possible variation on off-the-shoulder, transparent, strapless, backless, cleavage-revealing clothing you can imagine. I’m not talking slutty here, I’m talking classy eye candy in most cases. If the point is to be noticed, mission accomplished! Considering the reputation of Italian men, isn’t that like throwing fuel on a fire? Maybe it IS because of the reputation of Italian men that everyone works at it so very hard. When you see a group of women from 15 to 50, often you cannot tell the difference in their ages without examining their faces carefully. I’m not jealous, really, as I admire the care they take and I’m not looking to stand out. However, occasionally I do feel like the poster girl for Lands End, so maybe over time I’ll learn to kick it up a notch. Did I mention the men look great too? I told one of my friends before we left the U.S. that I felt fortunate to be going to live in Italy without having to live with an Italian male ego. I am sorry to report that tattoos are in fashion here, even for some of the more mature and well-off women, but fewer tats per person than in the U.S. So far I’ve only seen a few guys with massive numbers of tattoos and I don’t know if they are tourists or not. I’ve seen few tattoos my life that I thought were attractive, but I’m old. My friend’s 40-something son once said that, “everyone gets a pass for one tattoo but for every additional tattoo you loose points off your I.Q.” I’m also sorry to report that, although the government has wised up to the dangers of second-hand smoke and is banning smoking in an increasing number of public places, many Italians will light up whenever possible (although in fewer numbers...

Here we are the foreigners (stranieri), the Americans (Americani), and immigrants (immigranti). It is not too strange since it is tourist season (although few of the tourists are American) but VERY strange that we are new residents (nuovo residenti). There are few English speakers here. On our first Monday in town Larry was anxious to start taking care of business and felt the most important thing was to get a bank account. Even though we had decided before we arrived not to do anything without a referral, we were too anxious to get going to wait to contact the one person we knew in town. Larry had decided to try BNL (Banca Nationale Lavaro) because they were large and should be able to handle accounts for non-residents easily. Plus Larry read they were smart enough to see the financial crisis coming and bailed out of their risky investments early. And they just happened to be a block away. So we dress to impress (bella figura), bring our large folder of paperwork declaring we are worthy and off we go. A few banks in San Diego have those security entrance/exits where you must enter a through one door and wait for the second door to open before you can enter or leave the bank. Here all banks have a similar security system except they are a cylinder large enough for only one person. Somehow Larry just glides through them but I am usually left trapped inside with a woman’s voice telling me in Italian that she hates me and won’t let me into the bank. I discovered later that I was taking it way too personal and she really just hated my new purse (jealous, I’m sure). Her jealousy must know no bounds because there is a bank of lockers next to the door where you can lock up your offensive items and take the key into the bank. Of course now everything you need to do business in the bank is outside in the locker. Nice system. Once inside we get in line at the teller window, knowing that he/she will not be able to help us with a new account but hopeful will direct us to the right...

Country House San Giorgio

By Larry & Arlene on Jul 16, 2013 in Food | 2 comments

Country House San Giorgio (click here to go to website) You may have heard me say before we left the U.S. that we were very excited that the landlord of our apartment for the first two months, the beautiful Caterina, worked with her parent’s in their restaurant. I had hoped it was close to the apartment but it actually is located up in the hills a fifteen minute ride out of town which would require a cab ride. We decided to have Sunday lunch (pranza Domenica) at Country House San Giorgio Ristorante. Several people we had met in the last two weeks knew Caterina and said her mother, Daniela, is an excellent chef and the restaurant outstanding. As often happens in Italy, when we emailed Caterina to make a reservation and ask how long it took by cab to get there, she sent her father, Peppe, to pick us up. We arrived at a beautifully restored stone house set in the middle of nature and surrounded by olive trees. The house is also a B&B with six double rooms available for rent. We arrived at opening time – 12:45 and were the first ones there. We got to meet all of the Frollo family as well as Cesare, the 30-something hunk of a co-owner (photo on the web site). The dining rooms are beautiful and decorated in antiques but we selected a table in the gardens as they day was gorgeous. As is typical of Italian restaurants, soon the garden tables were full of family groups with children of all ages. Each member of the group takes a turn at tending to the little ones so no one gets left out. One group was celebrating the 100th birthday of the family patriarch. From our perfect viewing location, we just enjoyed taking it all in while enjoying an incredible meal typical of the area. No menu, everyone eats the meal of the day. Chef Frollo has that wonderful ability to use just enough (quanto basta) ingredients in each dish to make it complex yet not overpower the main ingredient. – First water, bread and a nice crisp local white wine – Passerina. – Then the antipasto, each dish delivered just...

Update:  I have been requested by the person this blog is about to refer to his new item as a “shoulder bag” not a purse.  I also forgot to mention that more than half the men here carry them. Before we departed the U.S., I gave away all but my travel purse/backpack (and most of our shoes) with plans to take advantage of the excellent reputation for local leather goods and get an awesome new Italian bag. Well, on Friday Larry and I walked to a recommended leather shop at the edge of town to see what they had. With absolutely no previous indication of desire, Larry announces that he’d been lusting after the convenience that women have of being able to carry everything in one place (as opposed to weighing down all his pockets). As the owner was willing to offer a discount, Larry, in the very primal act of seeing it, shooting it and dragging it home, left the store with a new shoulder bag. Leaving me still in the primal act of foraging. Don’t be concerned (assuming you were), one of our new friends told me that the July (Luglio) sales (saldi) started on Saturday (Sabato) so the next day I made a beeline for the leather store just off the main piazza where I had been drooling at their window display to see if I could make a deal. Yes! I am now the proud owner of an Italian leather bag at 40% off that I consider bella figura (literally ” beautiful figure” or looking good). So Mamma has a new bag...