No time to read this? Why not find something to study instead? A1 – Beginner/Elementary | A2 – Pre-Intermediate | B1 – Intermediate | B2 – Upper-Intermediate | C1 – Advanced | C2 – Proficiency | What’s my level? | Italian level test

+++

Buondì.

We’re back from our brief, four-night adventure in Toscana, during which time I ate the worst pizza of my whole life. I’ll spare you the details, the experience being too painful to dwell on.

Bug’s being cared for at the petting zoo, Mondays to Fridays, which is a relief, as keeping him busy twenty-four hours a day was hard work.

Stefi’s putting on a dress and makeup each morning and spending her days at the reception desk of our Italian school in Bologna.

She’s the one with striking grey hair, by the way. When I’m out with Bug, every time he sees a woman with grey hair – in the park, in the supermarket – he yells out “Mamma!” We get some strange looks.

And me? Well, life these days is a mix of medical visits and computer.

The ‘otorinolaringoiatra’ (‘ortorino’ for short, ear doctor in English) fixed my hearing on Monday, which was a relief as I’d been deaf for two months or so. That said, Bug’s howling is now uncomfortably loud, rather than an ignorable background hum.

And the ’ematologo’ (hematologist) shrugged and decided to try me on weekly injections rather than the daily pills I’ve been swallowing for sixteen years, each single syringe costing the astronomical sum of €160 (around $185 of those funny, green US dollars).

I was shocked! Still, as my now doctor daughter pointed out, it’s covered by the SSN (Servizio Sanitario Nazionale = National Health Service), so costs me not a euro cent. They even gave me a paper bag to carry my $750-worth of meds home in, along with an ice pack to keep the contents cool between refrigerators.

I wondered, briefly, if I should be paying more tax, but then remembered that a couple of decades ago, when we first started the school, a glitch in the laws governing IVA (l’Imposta sul Valore Aggiunto = Value Added Tax) had us paying an additional 20% percent tax for several years while ALL OUR COMPETITORS WERE EXEMPT.

That’s the sort of market perversion that Italy is prone to, but which feels incredibly unjust! It’s almost worth being ill to get my own back.

So that’s the medical stuff, the rest is all computer, in particular our ebooks store, which started its ‘Back to School -25% promotion’ on Monday.

The ebooks are mostly good. They’re valuable study aids, instantly downloadable, and there are free chapters to sample for everything, so you can try before you buy. It’s all nice and clear, the prices are reasonable, so what could go wrong?

Yet the customer service involved is a pain. How am I supposed to know what’s wrong with your iPad, if you don’t? It just stopped working, you say? It always used to work! No, nothing has changed with our ebooks. Take your device to the Apple Store and ask them.

I particularly hate ‘chargebacks’, which are rare but expensive and INFURIATING. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then good for you. You’re therefore welcome in our store – just ask if you need anything, I’m here to help.

But if you’re the sort of American (it’s always them) who buys things online, scans your credit card statement for unrecognised transactions, then – finding one and not recognising the amount (your bank converted it from British pounds, so it looks odd) – you use your SPECIAL LEVEL OF PROTECTION, reserved for inconsiderate morons who shouldn’t be allowed plastic cards in the first place, report to your bank that you’ve been defrauded, and reclaim your money.

Not only is this very vexing – that you did your ebook downloads and then reclaimed your payment – but our payment processor charges us a substantial fee each time, and the process of contesting your claim takes hours.

We’re warned that we should reply to each chargeback with evidence (proof of downloads, emails sent to the errant buyer, etc.) or our seller reputation will be damaged. But also told that it’s the buyer’s card company who will make the decision, so we have a snowball’s chance in hell. And must pay the fee in any case.

If your name is Fernando, and you live in the USA, then yes, I’m talking about you. You cost us money, cost me time and sleep, and won’t even answer emails enquiring what the problem was. Such behaviour indicates either fraud or gross incompetence, neither of which are nice to deal with.

A few years back a woman donated to https://easyitaliannews.com/, which was kind, but then – spying an ‘unauthorised transaction’ on her card statement – got right on to her card company and initiated the chargeback proceedure, with the results described above.

She got her money back (I’d have refunded it anyway, if she’d asked – who wants cash from an unwilling donor?), we were charged a hefty fee, and I wasted hours of time arguing with computers. And then, a month later, there she was again with a donation. She’s sent a small sum each month since. People, huh?

Così. That’s what I get up to when not doing ‘visite mediche’. Fun, fun, fun, ’til daddy takes the laptop away, and chucks it in the recycling, where it will no longer have the power to wind me up.

Details of the ebook promo are below.

If interested, do PLEASE download free sample chapters first, experiment with them on the device or devices you intend to use them on, ask for help (politely) if you need it, and remember that we bill in GBP (British pounds) not any kind of dollars, euros, yen, etc.

Read the details of the promotion carefully and don’t forget to use the coupon code – someone always does.

Alla prossima settimana!

2026 ‘Back to School’ Sale! 25% Off Ebooks for Language Learners

The 2026 EasyReaders.org ‘Back to School’ promotion has begun!

Which means that students of Italian, Spanish, French, and German can save 25% on ebooks to supplement or guide their language learning.

Everything in our ebooks store, EasyReaders.org, is a quarter cheaper if you remember to use coupon code 2026-Back-to-School-25%-Off

Ebooks for students of Italian, Spanish, French, and German can be found on our Catalog page, where everything is organised by language, type, and level.

Or follow these links:

Italian | Spanish | French | German

Use the following coupon code to save 25% on your orders, for as long as the promotion lasts, with no minimum or maximum spend:

2026-Back-to-School-25%-Off

First make your selection from our range of ebooks, which have been especially written to keep you interested and so making progress.

Then go to your shopping cart and apply coupon code 2026-Back-to-School-25%-Off to reduce the cart total by 25%.

Scroll down to verify that the cart total has been reduced by 25% BEFORE proceeding with your payment…

Coupon code 2026-Back-to-School-25%-Off is good until midnight on Sunday September 13th 2026.

You can use it as often as you wish until then, with no minimum or maximum spend.

Do find some time to stock up on the easy readers, parallel texts and grammar workbooks you’ll need to improve the language you’re learning –  at an unbeatable price – as the next sale won’t be until 2027, so a long way off!

Browse our Catalog now: Italian | Spanish | French | German

And don’t forget to apply Coupon code 2026-Back-to-School-25%-Off in your shopping cart, to reduce the total price by 25%.

P.S.

And here’s Wednesday’s reminder to read/listen to Tuesday’s bulletin of news from EasyItalianNews.com.

Reading/listening practice will help you consolidate the Italian you’re studying, expand your vocabulary, and build vital comprehension skills.

EasyItalianNews.com is FREE to read/listen to.

Subscribing, and so receiving all three text + audio bulletins of ‘easy’ news via email each week – on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays – is also FREE.

Just enter your email address on this page and click the confirmation link that will be sent to you.

+++

OnlineItalianClub.com | EasyItalianNews.com | Shop (ebooks) | Shop (online lessons)

OnlineFrenchClub.com | OnlineSpanishClub.com | OnlineGermanClub.com

+++

No longer interested?

All bulk emails we send (including this one) contain an unsubscribe link, usually at the bottom. Scroll down to find it, click the link and select ‘unsubscribe’. That will permanently remove your email address from our mailing list.

No time to read this? Why not find something to study instead? A1 – Beginner/Elementary | A2 – Pre-Intermediate | B1 – Intermediate | B2 – Upper-Intermediate | C1 – Advanced | C2 – Proficiency | What’s my level? | Italian level test

+++

Buondì.

Bug, Stefi and I are spending a few nights on a campsite in Toscana (Tuscany), near no place you’d have heard of, just over a third of the way down the road from Firenze (Florence) to Arezzo.

We have a six-bed cabin, with a kitchen, cramped bathroom, WC and a ‘deck’ furnished with garden furniture, so we can eat ‘al fresco’. Not that it’s likely to be very ‘fresco’, as the promised break in the tedious heatwave has not yet arrived, and now looks like it won’t until next week.

Toscana is pretty, as you’ll have heard even if you haven’t visited. We passed through rolling countryside with picturesque hilltop villages, just like you see on the TV.

The part we’re in now is more mountains than hills, which is fine too, after decades spent on the flat side of Bologna.

A funny thing Stefi said yesterday evening, about students at our Italian school, also in Bologna, specifically about Australians, who will typically complain that in the medieval city center they miss Aussie-style views to the distant horizon.

They’d only need to take a bus out to where we live, I replied, on the wrong side of town, where just looking out of an upstairs window is enough to see for tens of miles, potentially all the way to Ravenna or Rimini, then across the Adriatic Sea to the Balkans beyond. We don’t have kangaroos, though.

The campsite itself is well equipped with swimming pools, water slides and so on, plus a ‘trenino’ (little train) which carries everyone up and down the hill, from cabin to recliner/bar and home again at the end of a splash-filled day. The combination of water and train equals Bug’s dream holiday.

There are multiple on-site eating options – pizza sold more or less everywhere, an ‘old Roman trattoria’ which promises recipes based on nonna’s (grandma’s) recipes, and the place nearest to us, which offers dinner on a terrace with views of forested mountains, though tree coverage hid any marsupials that may have been hopping from peak to peak.

Given that we’re in the Chianti zone of Toscana, the restaurant menu offered a Chianti (homonymous Tuscan red wine), but the waiter had to dig about in the back of the ‘magazzino’ (warehouse, storeroom) to find it, which didn’t bode well.

Worse, after having invited me to taste it, he poured me just a quarter glass, then started trying to put the cork back in the bottle.

Stefi asked if she, too, could have a glass, so he graciously fetched her one and added an inch or so of plonk to it, then went back to trying to wrestle the cork back into the bottle.

When I queried that, he explained that, with the cork in, the wine would keep fresh in case some other customer ordered a glass. Which didn’t seem likely, as we were virtually the only people there. And anyway, does a bottle of wine between two adults seem excessive to you? Good grief.

Neither the wine nor the meal were enjoyable. Ever-optimistic Stefi maintains that if this evening we take the ‘treninio’ to the other end of the campsite the restaurants there will have a greater footfall and, hopefully, offer a more pleasant dining experience. I think it’s highly improbable. Watch this space.

Perhaps I should have mentioned that cars parked outside the hundreds of cabins mostly bear license plates from north European countries, particularly the Netherlands, Germany and France.

I briefly chatted to some kiddies from Ireland, and on the ‘trenino’ we sat with an Italian/German family with two little girls who – Bug was assured – could understand his confused Italian. The children smiled but wouldn’t say a word. Unsurprising, as mom consistently spoke German to them.

Apart from the hopeless waiter, and a very kind chap at reception who gave Bug a tupe of bubble mix, Italians seem to be few and far between here.

Draw your own conclusions about any possible link between visitor nationality and the quality of food, but it’s certainly weird to be in Italy yet surrounded by people speaking other languages.

Not that I can make out much, as I’ve recently (and hopefully, temporarily) become rather deaf. I’m due for a ‘prima visita specialistica’ next week, so that’ll be something else to update you on.

Bene. Gotta get on. We’ve got a hard day by the pool ahead of us.

Alla prossima settimana!

P.S.

And as usual, here’s a reminder to read/listen to Tuesday’s bulletin of news from EasyItalianNews.com.

Reading/listening practice will help you consolidate the Italian you’re studying, expand your vocabulary, and build vital comprehension skills.

EasyItalianNews.com is FREE to read/listen to.

Subscribing, and so receiving all three text + audio bulletins of ‘easy’ news via email each week – on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays – is also FREE.

Just enter your email address on this page and click the confirmation link that will be sent to you.

+++

OnlineItalianClub.com | EasyItalianNews.com | Shop (ebooks) | Shop (online lessons)

OnlineFrenchClub.com | OnlineSpanishClub.com | OnlineGermanClub.com

+++

No longer interested?

All bulk emails we send (including this one) contain an unsubscribe link, usually at the bottom. Scroll down to find it, click the link and select ‘unsubscribe’. That will permanently remove your email address from our mailing list.