maybe that would have been better

I accepted an apartment offer that Alvise had facilitated yesterday. The girls - I've written about this - had posted an announcement on a website I was using; I’d answered their post and then heard from Alvise that they are really cute friends of his and that the situation is perfect for me.

I met Letizia Monday and saw the place - a newish building with a doorman, a cute kitchen with apricot-colored cabinets, a big room (ahhh, with a human-sized bed) with azure walls and drapes. The rent is very affordable and Letizia at least, I haven't met Marta, is great. Both are from Palermo. Letizia speaks about 1000 words a minute, which made our first meeting a little awkward until I asked, so where are you from???

She laughed, "You can tell I'm Sicilian?"

"I’m just having a hard time with the velocità."

If the doorman gives me a hard time - mi rompe le palle (literally, breaks my balls, not as ugly in Italian as it sounds in English) - I'm to report I'm a cousin of Letizia. I already have a story planned out about our fathers being brothers, mine having immigrated to the US and having American children. I'll see how far I can push adopting Palermitan relatives. If I'm charming enough maybe I'll convince them.

Alvise was a fantastic host. Right before I left he made me a great lunch of tagliatelle and meat sauce, we talked about Bach cello suites and cannibalism and other favorite topics of mine. He's a photographer and collects fototessere, the little ID fotos you get from automated booths. I saw the books of them he's made; the effect of the pages of faces without labels or context is fascinating. Dominique, who is featured prominently in the books, had warned me to bring him one, which I didn't understand but faithfully followed orders. I got the explanation when I presented it; I also left him with an extra library card with possibly the ugliest photo of me in existence. That's how much I like Alvise, that I give him ugly fotos.

He also has the most endearing accent I've yet heard in Italian. Like Dominique, he speaks with soft throaty r's not hard rolling ones.

Before I left the Bologna train station I enjoyed a perfect caffe shakerato, (I have Matthew Sohm to thank for introducing me to this treat). I requested mine from the barista wearing the nametag "Mohammed B.". This handsome Arab man commenced a ten minute project of shaking my espresso with ice and sugar until it was a thick foam. I've seen this done before, but never with such care: he listened to the shaker to check the status of the ice and sugar, continued shaking, continued shaking, continued shaking until I was convinced I was going to miss my train. Finally he presented me with the glass, delicious. The other baristas were astonished - that's not a coffee, that's a capolavoro, a masterpiece, they joked. The other barrista gave me a look, then a double, and triple take when I laughed along at their joke - "oh, you understand, you're Italian?” incredulously. “No, no, but I understand perfectly.” I left an obscene tip and bowed to Mohammed on my way out the door instinctively, as one might in the presence of a great artist.

Annoyed with the lateness and the inexplicable layout of the train station I stopped to ask a Trenitalia employee, “Scusi, dove avete nascosti i servizi?” Where have you hidden the toilets? He unfortunately lacked a sense of humor.

I've decided from now on I'm only buying tickets for trains that are scheduled to have already departed in Bologna. Today I stood at 3:50, waiting for the 3:00 trains to depart so my train could get into the station. If I'd arrived at the station a half hour late, I'd still be there in plenty of time. Although sometimes the 15:46 train departs before the 14:46 train. That's just unlucky. Trenitalia is trying to get passengers to reserve seats more in advance. How can you be expected to reserve seats when you never know in what order the trains will actually depart?

Overheard, two nuns hopping quickly off the wrong train:

“Oh dear, we would have wound up in Venice instead of Rome!”
“Maybe that would have been better.”

I was eager to tell them their train was the next on that track. Something about talking to nuns just makes me happy. Habits.