Buondì.
Being a Brit, going abroad always used to seem like a major undertaking. When I was a kid, it involved getting on a cross-channel ferry to reach France the next day. Once we drove as far as the Alps, another time to someplace in Spain.
Obviously things have got a lot easier with low-cost carriers and the like, though from what I’ve read in the newspapers things can still be complicated, with flights cancelled, electronic passport gates malfunctioning, and train strikes. Maybe better to stay home?
And living in mainland Europe isn’t necessarily so different. I have an eighty-year-old neighbour who’s never been as far as the sea, a hundred kilometers down the road. And another, much younger family opposite us, who’ve never had a foreign holiday with their now-almost-adult kids.
But those are exceptions. With it’s thousand-year-old university, Bologna has been a destination for foreign travellers almost for as long as it has existed, and the traffic is mostly two-way.
Geography helps. From the nearby Adriatic coast, it’s only an overnight sail to Croatia. Or jump in a car and drive north to easily reach Slovenia, Austria, Lichtenstein (where?), Switzerland, France, or Monaco before stopping for the night.
Trains rumble through Bologna on their way south to Florence, Rome and Naples, but also depart to destinations in northern Italy, and onwards into mainland Europe.
My house is located under the flightpath to Bologna international airport. Some days the planes pass overhead every few minutes so, one way or another, it’s difficult not to be aware that there are lots of other, ‘foreign’ places nearby.
National boundaries are important, but a bit like standing in a line to order lunch, in Europe you can’t be unaware of others around you. In times of war, I guess that can be scary. But there’s also the sense of a shared history and, look back far enough in time, ‘we’ might once have been ‘them’ anyway, given how populations used to move about.
See the thirty chapters of medieval history on the club website for details.
But back to yesterday’s (Sunday’s) lunch. It was my Swedish mother-in-law’s birthday, so we were spending the weekend in Rimini. To avoid the birthday girl having to cook and wash up, a table had been booked for lunch in a restaurant about thirty-minutes drive away.
From the sandy beaches of the Adriatic, the road took us inland, more or less south-west towards the Apennines, destination San Marino, yet another of Europe’s independent statelets.
I picked up a brochure/tourist map for you. It has ‘Repubblica di San Marino, Oltre ogni immaginazione‘ emblazoned on it, next to a logo that reminded me of a porcupine experiencing a severe indigestion attack.
But the copy I got for you is in English, so at the top, in a white font across a blue sky, it has the slogan ‘Come and discover a world like no other‘, and below that an unimpressive-looking tower and what looks like a few ruins in an olive grove.
Lascia stare the brochure, I’ll paint you a picture with words instead. Think a mountain, big enough to be seen from twenty miles away, with medieval towers placed along a ridge at the top, and a city-full of tax evaders huddled on its lower slopes. You’ll get the general idea.
The Riminesi don’t have a high opinion of their independent republic neighbours, who clog up the streets in their flash cars with foreign number plates, watch Italian TV without paying the licence fee, and make free use of Rimini’s hospitals. That’s what my father-in-law complains of, anyway.
My wife adds, sourly, that the San Marino Republic pays university fees for the children of its citizens wherever they choose to go to study in Italy (though university in Italy is cheap anyway.)
And I’d personally grouch that you should never do business with someone from San Marino as they’ll feel totally free not to pay you, given that their business is outside the jurisdiction of the (admittedly horribly-inefficient) Italian courts.
Neither should you marry someone from there, for while your children will be born lucky citizens of a tax haven, you’ll never be allowed to naturalise, yourself.
Drive round and round the moutain, ever upwards, and the tax-free electronic goods stores and shamelessly-cheap gas stations are soon left behind, as the landscape becomes more like that in the brochure – cliffs, olive trees, and ruins.
Keep driving up and you’ll eventually reach a necklace of coach parks garlanding the moutain-top old town – the afore-mentioned towers, a mass of tourist tat shops, and picturesque streets filled with pizzerias of dubious reputation.
If you ever went to Mont Saint-Michel in France, or basically any place that’s a magnet for tourists on bus tours, you’ll already have an idea.
Oh, one interesting thing, though. The traffic cops in San Marino wear yellow gloves, with matching polo shirts. No, really! I took a photo for you, to prove it!
So how was lunch, you might be asking.
Well, the restaurant was just inside the walls, opposite the ‘Torture Museum’, which didn’t bode well…
Neither did the name, ‘Ristorante Bolognese’, which given that they seemed to serve mostly pizza and seafood must have been aspirational rather than descriptive.
Bologna is not famous for either pizza or seafood, so I’m guessing that the naming was done with the idea of communicating, yes we’re independent, no there’s no sales tax, but OK, we see why you might not be convinced about eating here on the top of a mountain, so we’ll market ourselves to remind you of the foodie heaven an hour up the road and see if that grabs you.
Silly name aside, the view across the mountains was fantastic and the staff were charming. Too charming…
I’d decided to try the seafood risotto, but the owner was heart-broken at the idea, visibly upset. I was making a terrible choice! He more or less insisted that I try a seafood pasta dish that he would prepare especially for me! With pasta his mother had made herself, or words to that effect.
It was noisy, I’m a little deaf, and it was obviously bullshit, so I didn’t pay much attention and just gave in. I wasn’t paying, either.
Focaccia was delivered to our table, fresh from the pizza oven, cheap white wine was poured, and after the rigours of our international journey, we began to have fun.
Predictably, when my meal arrived it was not better than ‘OK’ – barely-warm, home-made pasta with seafood fished from the freezer that very morning. I asked the guy who delivered it if he had, in fact, made it himself.
The place was busy and the server/owner looked rather worn out, so it was quite understandable that he’d forgotten what he’d promised someone he’d only spoken to for a few seconds, half an hour previously.
He smiled, assured me he hadn’t cooked it himself, gestured to his expensive shirt as if to say ‘the very idea!’, and wished me ‘bon appetito!’
So there you go. Abroad.
It makes a nice change sometimes, but you can’t trust the locals, if you can even understand them.
Perhaps my neighbours have the right idea.
A mercoledì.
P.S. Half-price ‘Ebook of the Week’ offer!
This week’s half-price ‘Ebook of the Week’ offer is 2 giugno 1946 (level A2/B1) because, well, Friday will be the 2nd of June. So why not?
Though one reason why not is that this one has sold well over the years, meaning virtually all of our regular ebook buyers will have already read it.
Never mind, money isn’t everything. This offer, then, is aimed at new club members, especially women…
Bologna, 2nd of June 1946. Italy is slowly recovering from the devastating effects of World War II. A referendum has been organised to decide whether the reborn state will be a republic or continue as a monarchy. And for the first time in history, Italian women can go to the polls! Newly-wed Marcella is so excited at the prospect she barely slept last night. But her husband, Antonio, is unconvinced…
- .pdf e-book (+ audio available free online)
- .mobi (Kindle-compatible) and .epub (other ebook readers) available on request at no extra charge – just add a note to the order form or email us
- 8 chapters to read and listen to
- Comprehension questions to check your understanding
- Italian/English glossary of ‘difficult’ terms for the level
- Suitable for students at any level
- Download your Free Sample Chapter (.pdf)
Do check out the Free Sample Chapter (.pdf) before you buy a copy. That way, you’ll know whether the level is suitable for you, and that the format works on the device you intend to use it on.
Until Sunday 4 giugno, 2 giugno 1946 is 50% discounted, so just £5.99 rather than the usual ‘easy reader’ ebook price of £7.99.
Buy 2 giugno 1946, just £3.99 | FREE sample chapter (.pdf) | History/historical ‘easy readers’ | Catalog
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P.P.S.
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Grazie di nuovo!
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