I thought I’d be living my dream upon moving to Tuscany from California several years ago. I had traded my career as a clinical psychologist to host art workshops in an idyllic setting just outside the Renaissance hilltop town of Pienza. Immersing myself in the local culture – its people, patterns and peculiarities – consumed and invigorated me during the first year. But instead of la dolce vita I had envisioned, I found myself fumbling and frazzled just getting through the day, be it grocery shopping, driving or grappling with the three-hour lunch break.
As soon as I saw the other shoppers at the Montepulciano supermarket in pearls, tailored suits and heels, I knew I was now living in a world with different rules. As if to confirm this, a man in a boxy gray jacket, replenishing the vegetable bins, sneered at me for grabbing a tomato with unfettered fingers. He pointed to a stack of disposable gloves. It was then I noticed the other shoppers donning them for selecting their produce. After bagging a few plump tomatoes, some lettuce, and Granny Smith apples, and discarding the mandatory glove on my right hand, I headed to the meat department. I couldn’t believe my eyes – the butcher was carving beef with his bare hands!
Hunting for canned soup, bags of ice and oatmeal turned up nothing. After a futile search for matches, a clerk informed me only tobacco shops sell them, yet there was fire starter for the barbecue amongst clothespins and detergent. The shelves contained no diet foods unless Coca Cola Light counts. Nor was there a "foreign foods" section. On the other hand, pasta – thin, thick, straight and coiled – filled an entire aisle.
While standing in the checkout line, instead of titillating tabloids to glance at, I was diverted by colorful packets of condoms on the rack above the chewing gum. Watching the other shoppers, I expected the checkout process to be a snap. But halfway into the cashier scanning my items, she vanished with my lettuce tomatoes, and apples. I could hear those behind me in line moaning – what did I do wrong now? Later, I learned customers should weigh and affix a price tag to their produce before coming to the cash register. Another surprise was being charged for each grocery bag, without even a choice of plastic or paper. The final jolt was paying the cashier, a simple matter if I’d understood "chinkwantahtrayeuroaykwarantahahtoecentisimi" (53 euro, 48 cents)!
Edith Wharton wrote in the 1920s that Italy is a "land in which anything may happen, save the dull, the obvious and the expected." Those words still hold true, even in aspects of Italian law – for example, foreigners can buy real estate but not a car. The challenge for me was finding a rental with automatic transmission. I'd never driven a stick shift, and on this up-and-down terrain I didn’t want to start now. Thanks to two neighbors, Lucia and Bruno, I was able to manage a month in the countryside without a car.
Wherever Bruno drove me, be it to the nearest bus stop or the grocery store, his deaf, black-spotted hound, Teresa, came along. She sprawled across the back seat while we chatted. Teresa’s gentle disposition matched her master’s. "Brava, brava,“ Bruno cheered, his droopy brown eyes glowing under thick gray brows, as I tried to converse in Italian – he corrected my totally botched attempts and then urged, “Coraggio, courage.” As we rambled through landscapes reminiscent of Renaissance paintings, I understood the grin etched on his leathery face.
When I finally found a rental car with automatic transmission in Florence, Lucia offered to take the train there with me and serve as my navigator for the drive home. ”Change lanes! Turn right! Merge here!” she barked, flailing her arms, her dark eyes widened in panic as I careened through the city center. Between obeying her rapid commands, deciphering cockeyed road signs, and dodging motorized sardine cans weaving in and out of self-made lanes, I thought I’d have a stroke.
Once we reached a country road and I quit gasping, Lucia commented on my Peugeot having automatic transmission. "There's not many auto like this in Italia; they're for pigri, lazy, drivers,” she grinned, baring a band of yellowed teeth. In my case, I thought, better to be lazy than maimed.
The first time I ventured out alone, I ended up in a labyrinth of dirt roads marked only by a cattle-crossing sign. How pleasing for the sky to meet the earth instead of endless roofs. Or where structures stood, the words of Edith Wharton rang true:
". . . picturesqueness which is never far to seek when Italian masonry and Italian sunlight meet."
Even with a map in hand, I got lost. I quit fretting once I realized there might be premature turns and unwise turns, but never wrong ones, in this land of corkscrew lanes and no right angles. A premature turn led to my stumbling upon a Roman amphitheater in Arezzo. Numerous unwise turns pushed my driving skills up a notch, including launching me on the high-speed autostrada. During my first solo drive home from Florence, despite following the arrows towards Rome, I kept going in circles. With nightfall approaching, and a Roma sign popping into view, I gritted my teeth and inched onto the autostrada. An hour later, as I neared home, drained but beaming, I repeated my new motto, “No wrong turns!“
My daily dilemma is what to do from one to four o’clock, when commerce comes to a halt. three hours that could be spent shopping, and I’m “grounded” – there’s nothing to do, nowhere to go – everything is closed but restaurants. Unless I get an early start, I prefer to shop in late afternoon rather than the pending lunch break impede my momentum. Recently, an hour from home, reeling from shopping interruptus, I coddled myself with a lavish lunch. Looking around the half-empty, brightly lit dining room, I saw no women, just stubble-faced men with their cell phones and Marlboros in easy reach. Lingering between courses of barley soup, linguini with clams, seafood kabobs, mixed salad, tiramisu and espresso, I still faced 90minutes before commerce resumed.
I didn’t know governmental agencies shut down midday until I drove to Siena, the provincial capital, for my residency visa. By time I found parking, huffed up the steep, serpentine streets to the regional immigration office, catty-corner to a magnificent black-and-white marble cathedral, and stood in an unruly queue with other people clutching documents, a clerk announced the doors would close shortly – at noon precisely – and reopen for one hour at three, or was it four? – and then, only on Wednesdays, or was it Thursdays?
The fact police stations also close midday was another surprise. When I went to the Pienza carabinieri after lunch to report receiving obscene phone calls, the doors were bolted. The sign indicated the office reopened at four o’clock. Upon my return, an officer in a crisp navy blue uniform took my report, pecking the information with two fingers on a rackety manual typewriter. As I was leaving the stark chamber lined with dark wooden file cabinets and maroon leather chairs, he remarked, “ You were probably a target since names in the phone book beginning with ‘J’ are foreigners.” I’d forgotten there’s no “J” in the Italian alphabet--so that explains the X-rated calls.
Now, years later, I look back on the challenges that loomed so large as a newcomer. As far as grocery shopping, I move through the aisles like a native. Likewise, I drive as fearlessly as one, albeit with automatic transmission. Adapting to the three-hour midday pause remains a struggle, but piano, piano, slowly, slowly, as Bruno says, I may even get that right.
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