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    Italy On Two Cappuccinos
    Italy On Two Cappuccinos
    Italy On Two Cappuccinos
    Ebook165 pages2 hours

    Italy On Two Cappuccinos

    By Gregory S Harris

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    About this ebook

    "I'd love to live in Italy." Are you sure about that? Italy is a complex country, full of tradition and history that tourists rarely scratch the surface.

    Italy on Two Cappuccinos is the insightful, witty travelogue of an American couple living in Italy for a year. Experience their visits to over 30 cities in Italy, Switzerland, and France and amusing events and insights they experienced there. Readers will enjoy the sights and sounds that will alternately entice them to visit or keep them away. Inspired by Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad and Peter Mayle's A Year In Provence.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGregory S Harris
    Release dateMar 20, 2011
    ISBN9781450512152
    Italy On Two Cappuccinos
    Author

    Gregory S Harris

    Gregory Harris has lived most of his life in Southern California except for various stints living in Paris, Nice, Prague, and of course, Italy. He currently lives with his wife and two children north of San Diego. He is an active member of the local Rotary club. He and his wife look forward to traveling again.

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      Book preview

      Italy On Two Cappuccinos - Gregory S Harris

      Leading up to Italy

      Well, how did I get here? Since first publishing this book, many people have asked me about the story behind the story: who am I, how did we get to Italy, and what did we do between excursions. So here it goes, in a nutshell:

      For the six years leading up to our year in Italy, I had been living and working in Silicon Valley, riding the wave of the so-called dot-com boom and bust.

      I had the good luck to land in San Francisco in 1995 after leaving a dead-end job in Los Angeles. I had visited San Francisco a few times with my LA girlfriend and each time it was like a breath of fresh air. Fresh in my memory, San Francisco was relatively clean and crisp compared to the pollution to be found in LA, anyway. San Francisco was hip and compact in a way that Los Angeles could never be. The public transport system worked, there was a history that went back before 1930, and you could actually get into the best restaurants without being a movie star.

      By the time I got there, San Francisco (The City to those in the Bay Area) was still a sleepy city by the bay, known more for Fisherman’s Wharf than for high tech. In fact, outside of its gay community, San Francisco wasn’t known for much at all.

      I then had the good luck to do contract work at a couple of local companies, one a local rising star that few had heard of at the time called Netscape. I ended up working there for a few years, before moving on to a few lesser known properties, eventually winding up in 2001 at a six-man startup, where we were developing something with true potential when the bottom fell out of the market. One afternoon, the CEO called us into a meeting where he laid the news on the table: no more money, no more company. Not even a severance. On the bright side, you could take all the vacation days you wanted!

      Oh well, I thought. This was the land of opportunity, I had a healthy resume, and it should be a piece of cake to shoot out a few resumes and be back at work before the month was out.

      But it turned out that all the companies that had been hot the month before were suddenly either shutting down, reducing staff to core operations, or putting off hiring decisions for the foreseeable future. At any rate, where I should have been in like Flynn, I was out in the cold, along with thousands of others.

      I had, however, laid the groundwork for the next stage. During my years in the dot-com world, I had befriended Pietro, a manager of an Italian translation company who made regular visits to the area. We had kept on good terms, and if I hadn’t always had work for his company, I usually had a referral. In the barrage of resumes I sent out that summer, I had included one to Pietro. Much to my surprise, he replied to my email: why don’t you come work for us in Italy?

      My first reaction was no, because it’s Italy! I had never really considered working in Italy. Outside of pasta, bocce and gelato, I didn’t speak Italian. France, I could handle. At least I could speak French. What did I know of Italy beyond Florence, Venice and Rome?

      Another development had recently occurred, which influenced my decision: I had gotten married just a few months before to a Mexican girl, Lili, who was immune to San Francisco’s charms: it was cold and ugly to her, and she would insist on losing her way driving along the grid that makes up most of the city. Lili thought Italy sounded pretty good, although she didn’t speak Italian either.

      Looking at my rapidly dwindling options from our Victorian flat in the Mission district, the Italian job was sounding better and better. Over breakfast one day, with no other prospects for employment, I asked Lili, Want to go to Italy tomorrow?

      Sure, she said. It’s not like you have anything else to do.

      So we bought our last pre-9/11 tickets at the airport the next day, and took off. We arrived to an Italy in August, which means that everything is closed. Everything, that is, except for a few restaurants, bars and offices, which were running on skeleton crews. We rented a car in a sleepy Milano and drove to Modena, where nothing much at all was going on.

      The company was putting us up in a hotel within walking distance of the office, which was in an industrial area on the Via Emilia just outside of town. The office was a typically low-budget affair, with bare, concrete floors and espresso machines in each room but no air conditioning. The open windows let in the cigarette smoke from the long balcony connecting all the rooms.

      We met with Pietro and his brother the owner in the owner’s glassed-in office and they outlined their offer.

      First, they offered both of us a job, not just me. That would keep Lili busy while doubling our income. They would also provide us with housing, a car, work papers, and whatever assistance we needed. There was no relocation involved, but that meant nothing to me. I was happy to have work. Plus, the prospect of an expatriate life – Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Trotsky – clouded my mind. In short, it was an offer we couldn’t refuse.

      We shook hands (no written agreement, of course – this was Italy, after all) and left a few days later to start packing and selling off all our stuff.

      We didn’t really think we would be returning to San Francisco, much to my chagrin and Lili’s pleasure, so we sold off almost everything we owned. We packed up the back seat of my Maserati (an artifact of the former boom) and drove south, to leave our paltry remaining possessions with my parents in San Diego.

      We flew back home to say our goodbyes and pack our suitcases. Our flight was set to leave on September 12, 2001 and our goodbye dinner had been scheduled for 9/11. While we ended up going out that evening, it was a weird feeling. Our flight was also delayed for a few weeks and when we did leave, we were glad to be going.

      Modena, Part I

      We returned to Modena in October, where the weather was cooler but the nights were brighter. The city was alive with bustling cafes and bars. Our work hours prevented us from seeing a lot of this during the week, however, as we had been brought on to serve the American market and we were expected to work until 10:00 PM. That hour sounded odd to us, and this was part of our introduction to Italian culture. The owner had chosen 10:00 because he wanted us to work until lunchtime in California. When I told him that in California lunch was noon, he smirked. You expect me to believe that? I know you’re just trying to leave an hour earlier. He was going by the fact that lunch in Italy is one o’clock and therefore it must be the same all over the world. Nothing would convince him otherwise. More cultural experiences would soon follow.

      The next surprise came with the lodging arrangements. On our arrival, we had been brought to our apartment which was a few miles farther out of town than the office. The business owned this, along with several other apartments in the area. We lived comfortably here, driving a company car, for a few weeks.

      One day, returning home, we walked in to find suitcases in the main room. Anyone home? we called out. A girl came down the stairs and introduced herself as a new employee of the company, who had been offered housing.

      The next day, we spoke to Pietro. We had thought that when he’d said we would have lodging he had meant our own place, but his reply showed that thought to be ridiculous. When we said we would provide lodging, we meant you could stay until you found something else, he explained. Maybe it’s my poor English. Scusi.

      I thought it was odd, because his English had always sounded pretty good to me. But I figured, hey, it’s Italy, we have jobs, and we will get our working papers soon. No big deal. We’ll find an apartment. Thus began our first quest: shelter.

      Italy is a very old country, and many people have been living in the same place for hundreds of years, often on the same land, if not in the same ancestral home. This makes finding a place to live particularly tricky: unless someone has moved, gotten married or died, there are few places available, and even fewer that have modern conveniences.

      At first, we tried asking around the office, and we got two offers: one girl was moving in with her boyfriend, and we could rent her apartment in town. It was ideal (besides the three stories with no elevator), and we told her we would take it. But at the last minute she decided not to rent it, in case things didn’t work out. It’s very difficult to evict a tenant in this country. Sorry, she said. Good luck! We grumbled and moved on.

      Another guy at the office had an apartment, this one close to work (less than ideal), but alas by the time we said yes a few

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