We’re Not in Virginia Anymore, Dinosaur.

We have a house!  It’s roomy and yet cozy, antique but remodeled, secluded and yet within walking distance of cafes, shops, and restaurants.  The expansive garden contains – get this - a petite citrus orchard.  In a word, it’s pretty great.  We signed the lease last week and our things were delivered shortly thereafter.  And after over 60 days of living in a hotel room, surely our lives are about to get easier…?

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The thing about renting a living space in Italy is that you are literally just renting the space, encompassed by four walls and entered through a door.  There are no closets.  None.  Not one_single_closet.  And when Italians move, they take with them everything  - and I’m talking the kitchen sink.  Literally.  They’ve bought their own, and therefore take with them when they go: kitchen sink, kitchen counters, cabinets, cupboards, fridge, oven, hood system, microwave, etc.  With the rented space, there is no washer, no dryer, no window fixings, no carpets, no wardrobes, no hooks, hangers, or racks.  I think they occasionally leave light fixtures.  And perhaps a crumb that is even too small for a mouse.

So before we even begin to unpack what looks like an indoor paintball course of stacked brown boxes, we must attempt to visualize all our belongings, then go out and try to find storage structures – wardrobes, cupboards, hutches, cabinets – that we estimate will be the perfect size in which to fit our belongings.  Alternately, we could unpack and unwrap all of our stuff in order to better calculate our storage needs, but then we’d be left with daunting piles of commingled belongings, a la Wall-E-esque towers of things. 

IKEA is a great place for purchasing what were before unnecessary and un-contemplated pieces of storage furniture that replace the concept of closets.  But upon return from IKEA, all the new storage structures require assembling.  Now which of these stacks of identical brown boxes contains our tools…?

OK, forget the unpacking of boxes and assembling of hutches; I’m hungry.  And luckily, I still have my hard won frying pan from when we were staying in the hotel.   I bought eggs (unrefrigerated, of course) from the corner store, so I’m in business for a fried egg.  ---  But wait, why won’t the gas stove freaking light?!  Ok, I turned the gas valve under the sink to the “open” position.  I checked the valves on the side of the house (there are four of them), and they’re all open too.  We just had a gas truck deliver 400 liters of natural gas to the external tank sitting in our yard, so I know we have gas.  Oh, maybe the delivery guy closed something while he was delivering the gas, and I need to go open it…

Nope.  I checked all three gas valves attached to the tank, and they too are in the open position.  Maybe there’s a switch outside that I didn’t see.  Or perhaps one of these humming metal boxes attached to the side of the house that are bedazzled with an array of switches must be flipped on.  And maybe something has to warm up for a few minutes.  I just want an egg, for pete’s sake, c’mon!

The difference between American homes and appliances and their Italian counterparts is that American abodes assume most of the control.  For the majority of American appliances, there is an on/off button, and that’s really about it.  If the on/off button doesn’t work, we call the repairman.  Now, Italian appliances within Italian homes present the user with much greater responsibility.  There are valves (often multiple ones) that must be opened and then closed when the task is complete.  Things need to be switched on outdoors and then allowed to warm up before other things indoors can function properly.  There are reset buttons.   There is the constant concern that running too many appliances at once will overload the system, causing power to go out either for a section of the house or the entire place.  And when that happens, there are outdoor circuits to switch and more reset buttons to uncover and push.  The Italian way isn’t bad per say, it’s just much more user-dependant.  Almost like a scavenger hunt every time you want to boil some water or run the AC.  And while I love a good scavenger hunt, this user isn’t accustomed to the pressure of such responsibility!  Yet, that is.

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Alright then, no worries.  I called the landlord’s super friendly and somewhat English-speaking sister, and she came over to help me.  With her boyfriend.  And two workmen.  Who weren’t there related to the gas issue; they were there to fiddle with some other things and now our AC will be controlled differently.  Like, two switches have to be flipped inside the house and then a switch on each AC unit (there are four) instead of one switch outside.  That’s cool, whatever makes the cold air blow.   Ah, then the landlord showed up too.  Spontaneous party at the villa!  I wished I could offer them some espresso, but – mi dispiaci – the oven won’t turn on.  Oh yes! – the oven.  Turns out there’s a reset button hidden under a big metal bolt-looking thing outside with the valves that has to be unscrewed before the button can be pushed, and this has to be reset from time to time.  What causes it to have to be reset?  Um…ah, you know…things.

We have a dish washer, which will be wonderful since I love to cook and I hate to wash dishes.  It’s European made, but despite that, when the dishwasher is running, nothing else can be running.  Not the AC, the washer or dryer, the microwave, or especially a hair dryer.  If so, the power goes out in the entire villa.  This happened twice already.  And then once again last night when the dishwasher wasn’t running, so we still don’t know what caused it that time.  But I was in the shower.  Our bathroom is very dark.

Momma mia, I digress.  These hutches aren’t going to put themselves together.  But really, they can wait.  It’s time to hit the reset button on the gas, open the gas valve under the sink, light the flame, make some stovetop espresso, and then stroll through my lovely little citrus grove and remind myself that I am in beautiful, ever-sunny, lovely Sicily.  No, we’re not in Virginia anymore, Dinosaur, but this place is pretty great too.

Check out our big domed ceilings!

And antique tiled floors!

 

Notes on Vehicular Activity

Recently while driving my compact Honda Fit with a Sicilian friend in my passenger seat, I had to execute a [not-unusual] hair-raising merge from a full stop (the on-ramp was questionably if not specifically designed to prevent the usual moving acceleration-to-merge and instead tested drivers’ ability to simultaneously pray and discover the zero-to-sixty ability of their cars).   I waited for a window in the traffic zipping by (due to the variance of speeds driven, you can never quite tell if the window is sufficient, hence the praying), floored my gas pedal, and away we went.  My engine roared and I chuckled to myself at my little car’s short-man complex:  it seems to need to roar extraneously while increasing its speed at merely an acceptable pace.   My friend made an appreciative sound and said in all earnest (and thick Sicilian accent), “Ah nice.  Like Ferrari.” 

Uh yeah, sure…my Honda Fit is juuuust like a Ferrari, haha.   ;D

I had remarked in an earlier blog entry that driving here is a whole new experience, seemingly without rules.  And (before my Fit made its way across the ocean), while driving our European rental car, which was calibrated in kilometers per hour, I didn’t really know how fast I was ever going.  But now my car is here.  My lovely little Honda Fit was dwarfed by every other vehicle on the road in America, but here it is in constant peril of having its side mirrors decapitated.  Anyway, my car tells me how fast I’m going in miles per hour.  Turns out that the left lane of the autostrada (the interstate) travels at a flow between 90-100mph.  So that’s why driving seemed so slow during our visit to the States.  Ah, ahem, it also turns out that my darling Honda Fit isn’t nearly as fuel efficient while barreling at autostrada velocities…

I may have also previously mentioned that our neighborhood volcano, Mt. Etna, constantly Christians us with a light sprinkling of ash from its ever smoking summit.  Virginia folks, recall that one week during Spring when yellow pollen coats every outdoor surface and turns your car a putrid hue.  It’s like that all the time here.  Except not yellow, fortunately.  Everyone’s cars are in a constant state of that I-just-went-4-wheeling-on-a-dusty-country-road look.  Not many people have garages though (us included), so we’re all in it together, and I choose to think that the ash gives everything a quaint “antique” look.  Here’s the thing though – this dusty coating, it’s not dirt, it’s ash.  Our cars are relentlessly coated in microscopic rock shards.  So we have to be careful to thoroughly rinse the windshields before running the wipers or we’ll scratch the glass (hmm – “frosted” windshields; could be pretty, if dangerous).  And no one dares write “Wash Me” (or what have you) with their fingers on their friend’s cars, lest they scrape the words or images into the paint permanently.  Unless that’s what they’re going for.

Turns out my car’s gas tank holds about 35 liters.  Good to know. 

Vespas and scooters and motorbikes are everywhere here.  Talk about no rules of the road - those guys do whatever they want.  It’s insane.  To me.  There must be some code of conduct, but for the life of me, I can’t figure it out.  It’s got to be something the Italian’s are brought up to understand; something that as a foreigner, I’ll never fully catch on to.  So while I’ll occasionally let myself feel the thrill of the left autostrada lane, I’m going to go ahead and miss out on the European scooter experience.  I’ll take my Ferrari, er, Honda any day.

Un Momento, Per Favore

Readers, I apologize for the gap between entries. I currently have no internet access, save an iPad. The situation is projected to be remedied within the week. Keep an eye out for a new entry soon!