Inter not yet!

Okay I thought they were kidding – two to six months to get ADSL installed! Impossible! But in Italy it appears the impossible is possible.

We have now been here for six weeks and we still don’t have an internet connection at home – nor will we for at least another two weeks. The process has been worthy of a Goldoni comedy without the masks – though I am now aware that sales and service people here all wear masks of one type or another.

A company called Mercurious has been offering to handle all our telecommunication needs here in Italy. Having been told of the horrors of dealing with Telecom Italia we decided that one stop shopping would be the best solution. Sergio – twentyish, compact, cutish and told by his mother since birth that he was the most wonderful boy in the world – assured us that in his hands we would experience only the finest in service. And would that mother’s son ever lie to us?

Let’s just say that Sergio sometime gets fact and fairy story confused.

Fact 1: There are four companies each offering six or seven plans depending on our needs.

Fairy Story 1: Fastweb (our choice) had a connection to our building and fiber optics was not a problem.

Fact 2: Decision made, unfortunately there was Ferragosto, when as much as he would like to take action our Sergio could not as everything was closed.

Fact 3: First week of September Sergio and the installer show up and thump walls and examine conduits then shake their head sadly.

Fact 4 and Fairy Story 2: The line into the apartment was owned by Telecom Italia and, Scuzi, but they would never allow an intrusion by a company dedicated to the destruction of one of Italy’s most beloved and efficient government services. I’ll let you decide where the fairy story is in that sentence.

Fairy Story 3: It could not be done that day because it would take three men to run the new line into the apartment.

Fact 5: Second week of September Sergio and another installer show up – giving lie to the three men story from the week before. Again much thumping of walls, unscrewing of conduit covers but, Gratia Deo, now some cable has appeared. Then they both disappear for 10 minutes. The installer returns and I desperately try and understand his explanation as to why it is not possible this time.

At this point Facts and Fairy Stories become intertwined and too numerous to count: Sergio returns and explains that there are only 10 connection boxes in the building and they are all in use. And there is no way to introduce fiber optics into the building in any case. And the line is registered to the Embassy and cannot be altered in any way. And, despite their status as a beloved and efficient government service, it will take Telecom Italia at least a year to run in another line. At that point mama’s wonderful boy is extremely lucky that I did not muss up his carefully arranged hair and mention why they say Roman boys drive big, fast cars – a fate almost worst than being forced out of your mother's house!

At this moment a colleague of Laurent’s is trying to separate fact from fairy story and it looks like there just might be a solution. However I won’t count on anything until I do my first posting from home base – that six month figure looks like it may be a fact not a fairy story.

7 Settembre – Santa Regina

Getting To (Re)Know You

Lynette was asking if Laurent (I thought I'd include a picture of my Lione with a Lione at Villa Borghese) and I were on our honeymoon here in Rome and as romantic as it would be to say yes, I’m afraid the answer is no.

There has just been too much going on over the past few weeks. We’ve been dealing with the following, in no particular order:

• A new dwelling – a very nice apartment in a lovely area but with its problems (more about that in another post.
• A new neighborhood – where do you find what?
• A new currency – those Euro coins are confusing as is any monetary system when you’re not use to it and we really have to stop thinking that 1 Euro = 1 CAD.
• New Kitchen appliances – as silly as it sounds European washers, dryers etc are very different from their North American counterparts. You have to remember to dump the water out of the dryer when a cycle has finished or it will overflow. It takes 2 hours and 30 minutes to dry a small load and it’s often better to hang things out on the balcony to dry in the sun.
• Laurent is trying to adapt to a new work environment – office set-up, colleagues, system, type of cases etc. That has put a great deal of stress on him and he is handling it well but ultimately we are here because of his work.
• A very complex but efficient, public transportation system. We don’t have the car yet – and honestly the thought of driving in Rome has me a bit scared but we’ll leave that for another time. So far we’ve been able to get most places quickly – but then it is Ferragosto.
• Ferragosto! (see almost every previous posting)
• Language – see below
• Only part of our belongings are here – Laurent’s air shipment arrived from Beijing but the two sea shipments (including most of my clothes) won’t be here until some time in late September. However we seem to be able to survive on what we have. I do a bit more laundry than normal but still have a clean shirt every day so I suppose I really don’t need a two-week supply of Land’s End Polo Shirts. And we’ve had people over for dinner twice since we arrived so it is possible to cook without that set of graduated French White casseroles!
• A minor thing but a very different television system – did you know that out of 898 possible channels 1/3 are in Arabic, at least 150 are sex related – including 15 in Arabic! And I must do a post about Italian TV at some point – it’s hilarious.
• We are trying to get to know each other and live with each other after three years apart.

And it’s that last point that probably is the most demanding – all the rest is inconsequential. There have been no great spats – well okay one… alright two – just that we are both use to living on our own and having things our own way. After all, despite what Laurent says, I’m the one who knows the correct direction to insert the toilet paper roll! And toothpaste tubes where given lids for a purpose.

But Odd Couple comedy routines aside it’s the adapting to each other’s rhythm that is creating the greatest challenge. Knowing when a silence simply means there’s nothing to say and when it means there’s a problem. I’ve lost count of the number of times either one of us has said: Everything okay? And got the reply: Yeah, Why? But fortunately those episodes are becoming fewer and fewer as the days go by. We are still able to finish each others sentences and often requests only have to be half-voiced to be met. A few more weeks and we should be into the same routine as any old married couple.

As for a honeymoon, well we have two long weekends coming up – Labour Day in September and Canadian Thanksgiving in October – and maybe a weekend at an inn in Tuscany may not be a bad idea. We are heading to Parma for the Verdi Festival at the end of October. We’re planning to stay at an Inn run by the great – now retired – tenor Carlo Bergonzi and his son. Word has it that it is comfortable and has an extremely good restaurant. So we can mix music, food and a chance to see the countryside around Parma.

22 agosto – Santa Maria Regina