The ANNOTICO Report

Our Friends Bob and Eileen Masullo from Sacramento, California (Bob retired
as a Columnist from the Sacramento Bee), began a year long sojourn in Italy
in June, based in Soiano del Lago,on Lago di Garda, Italy's largest lake,
surrounded by Verona, Bresia, and Trento, at the intersection of the
Lombardia, Veneto, and Trentino Alto Adige Regions.

This is the first of a series of Reports and he writes as if to transport
you, and make you his traveling companion. [How the Jealousy and Envy is
welling up inside me :) ]

These reports will appear in "Fra Noi", the Chicago-based Italian-American
monthly newspaper, and in a series of Sacramento papers (Inside East
Sacramento, Inside the City, Inside Arden, etc.) aimed at neighbors.

By Bob Masullo

Conflicting emotions greet us as we begin our year-long stay in Italy --
joy and fear.

On the one hand the adventure Eileen and I had dreamed about for so long is
actually underway – as of June 11 -- and Soiano del Lago, our “hometown”
for the next 12 months, is stunningly beautiful.  The little exploring
we’ve done – to Desenzano and Bergamo (see sidebar) – have been
delightfully promising.

But on the other is the reality that we have left our comfortable American
lifestyle far behind. Furthermore, at an age when most people just want to
take it easy, we are setting up a new home much like a couple in their 20s.
Unfortunately, we’re in our 60s. What’s more, we are doing it in another
language.

The comfort of one’s native tongue, in one’s native land, is something we
all take for granted. A store clerk, for example, may occasionally be
difficult at home but you can always understand what he or she saying. Here
communicating with even a very pleasant one is a challenge.

“What did he say?” Eileen asks me or I her.

“I don’t know. It sounded like ‘blubh-blubh-blubh.’”

Nevertheless, we’ve met the language challenge fairly well so far. Perhaps
the most difficult thing we’ve negotiated is a pedicure for Eileen. She
still has 10 toes and they look pretty good, so I guess we were successful.

We also got by quite nicely, mille grazie, at an olive oil festival that we
read about in the Giornale di Brescia (daily newspaper). Just getting
through the article was an achievement. And at the festival itself, we
found the Italians as gracious as possible.

Sometimes, though, the difficulty of getting even the most basic words out
of one’s mouth fills both of us with trepidation.  Even when you know the
words the tongue often freezes. And of course, when it does you feel like a
fool.

I have found conversations easier if I initiate them. At least then I know
what I am trying to say. If I wait for someone to speak to me, I often turn
to stone when he or she does. Then it gets worse. Later, I may remember
what the person said and realize I knew the Italian words perfectly well.
But at the moment they were spoken, they sounded like gibberish.

My ancestry, as I’ve previously noted, is100 percent Italian but my
grandparents came to America more than 100 years ago. That’s too long to
keep linguistic links. Although my parents spoke enough Italian to
communicate with them, they used English exclusively with me. The little
Italian I know was learned late in life in a more or less academic fashion.
As for Eileen, her only connection with Italian is what she’s picked up
from me, a few classes at the Italian Cultural Center, and food terms.

Joy-wise, we like our new home, a two-bedroom apartment within the confines
of a stone building that is several hundred years old. Seven residential
and three business units are in the building.

Our unit has very high ceilings – 12 feet in most spots, more in others –
with handsome, large, dark wooden beams. Golden tiles, each about a foot
square, cover the floors in all rooms.

The living room blends into the dining room and it into a small kitchen,
making for one fairly large space, perhaps about 25 by 12 feet, where we do
most of our living.

The apartment has basic furnishings but needs a lot of little things.
Fortunately, we found an Ikea store in Brescia that answered our prayer for
cheap, fairly decent furnishings.

Ikea, the legendary Swedish marketer, has come to Italy in a big way and
Italians seem to love their gigantic stores. But then that is not
surprising since Scandinavian and Italian tastes are quite similar – at
least when it comes to furniture.

Our main view is of a fully enclosed courtyard with parking spaces for
seven cars, including the zippy little silver Lancia Ypsilon we rented from
Hertz. On the ground floor there is a parrucchiera (a beauty parlor – and
Eileen’s next appointment challenge).  Our apartment front door is 16 steps
above it.

An iron and wooden gate that looks like something out of the Middle Ages,
although it opens with an electric remote, separates the courtyard from the
street and the center of the village. We don’t have a direct view of the
lake but a short walk gives us a magnificent one as well as of green hills
covered with olive trees, grape vines and hundreds of terracotta roof tops.

Outside the gate, immediately to the right, is the Caffe’ Baraonda, run by
a friendly, middle-aged spitfire named Alessandra. Across the street is a
farmacia, where a young pharmacist, Simone, speaks “only leeteele bit
English, mi dispiace” but with that little and our “po’ italiano” he has
already proved helpful to Eileen when she was searching for something to
minimize the itch of insect bites.

To go off on a slight insect-related tangent, our apartment has three
large, classic European windows of the type you virtually never see in
America. They have large functioning shutters (not the typical
only-for-looks American ones) which open like Old West bar room doors.
Fortunately, they also have pull-down screens that keep out all but the
smallest insects.

Alas, there are some very tiny insects here who find the screens no
barrier. We spent two nights providing these minuscule Italians with an
American food they seemed to enjoy very much – us.

But Italian genius has come to our rescue (alas, according to the box, by
way of the Johnson Wax company). A little device called an
“elettroemanatore,” which we found in a supermarket, has made these pests
persona non grata in our bedroom. You put a “piastrina” (plastic chip with
anti-bug properties) in it, then plug it into an electric outlet. Each
piastrina lasts for 12 hours. Do we have anything like this back home? I
don’t know. But if we do, we highly recommend it.  We’ve found ours a
godsend.

To the left of the farmacia is a mini-park and a church whose slightly
off-key bells charmingly call attention to Masses and prayers. Beyond it is
an old castle with a beautiful clock tower. It’s the town’s most visible
landmark, especially at night when it is lit with a brilliant golden light.

To the left of our courtyard gate is the small, very pretty hotel, Porta
del Sole, which is managed by Alessandro Bertini, the son of our landlord,
Luigi Bertini.

Many people from back home said they will visit us in Italy and we’ll
recommend the hotel, which has gorgeous rooms (manager Bruna Rossi showed
us one) and a magnificent swimming pool – with two olive tree-covered
“islands” -- and a view of the foothills and several neighboring towns.

Garda, Italy’s largest lake, is somewhat like Lake Tahoe in the States, in
that it was formed by glacial action and is a popular resort area. It draws
tourists from all over, especially Germany, and lies about midway between
Milan and Venice, near the medium-sized cities of Brescia and Verona.

Mario Ubiali, our one-time exchange student and now a very busy 33-year-old
Brescian businessman, found the apartment for us and has been our guardian
angel, watching over our transition to Italian life. His always cheerful
manner -- not to mention his flawless command of English -- has made our
move as smooth as possible.

On our first night in Italy he took us to Silvano’s, a fancy pizzeria in
the nearby village of Lonato that was a model of efficiency. Waiters took
orders with a hand-held electronic devices that communicated them to the
pizza makers instantly. Pizzas were ready – and perfect – in minutes.

Pizzas in the land that invented them are individual affairs. Each person
orders one – about 14 inches in diameter, the only size – and is expected
to eat all of it. If you can’t, though, don’t ask to take home what’s left.
That’s not considered good form. In fact, save for bottled beverages,
nothing is ever taken home from a restaurant in the Old Country.

Our first few days included several trips to supermarkets. They are quite
similar to American ones now, save that every label is in Italian, and you
must do your own bagging after checking out.  Also, pasta selections take
up two full aisles while breakfast cereals barely cover a few feet of one
shelf.

Prices for some items are considerably higher than at home (a small jar of
peanut butter, no doubt there just for “gli americani” since most Italians
detest the stuff, is about $6) but most items are about the same. Wine and
liquor, however, are cheaper. Good wines are plentiful for under $5 a
bottle.

Now that Italy is on the euro, prices are relatively easy to understand.
Unlike the old lira, which always required one to deal in the hundreds of
thousands, euro prices look just like dollars and cents. However, since one
euro is worth about $1.20, prices seem deceptively low.

Driving Italian-style also has been a mixture of pain and pleasure.

The pain: For one thing, as high as gas prices have gotten in the States,
they are still low by European standards. To fill up our tiny car with
diesel fuel costs more that $60. For another, lanes are narrower and hardly
any roads have shoulders. For a third, a lot of Italians drive at speeds
that seem insanely fast.

The pleasure: Italian roads are very well built and extremely well signed,
showing what towns you are heading for well in advance and repeating their
advice several times before you have to make a turn.  Even country roads
are so marked.

Autostradas (like our freeways only they are not free; you get a ticket
when you enter and pay a toll based on the distance you have driven when
you exit) are very efficient and their rest stops have superb restaurants.

The country roads are mind bogglingly beautiful although often quite hilly,
windy and narrow. They are constantly taking you by gorgeously laid out
vineyards, olive orchards, and historic villages and structures.

We’ve survived our first few days. We even negotiated about 30 miles of
nighttime autostrada driving in the rain without our hearts, which were
constantly in our mouths, ever popping out.

Will we make it for a whole year? The jury is still out but, overall, I’d
say our chances for success are good. We have had some second-thought
moments but they always pass and we are anxious to continue our
“avventura.”

Episode II:  Bob and Eileen explore some neighboring towns while continuing
to work on their Italian language skills.