It's Monday, and as I am writing this, the streets are still relatively holiday-quiet; I think the official "holiday" season here doesn't really end until Epiphany, January 6th, which is a public holiday here. I do hear the vegetable seller driving around in his truck calling out his wares over his loudspeaker, though. And, when I was hanging out laundry earlier today, I looked down from the balcony to see someone standing in the street waiting for the doctor's office to open.
Speaking of the doctor's office - she (one of our landlords) still hasn't entirely moved to her new offices. When we first moved in, we were told she'd be moving out in a week or so. I mentioned it in passing last time I spoke with Nicoletta, and she said that they're still working on getting the new place ready! Because Italy. I don't really mind, except that I'm not thrilled about a bunch of germy sick people hanging out around our front door several days a week; I'm kind of a germaphobe. But they all do wear their masks, so that's something, anyway. The doctor's office placed a sign on the door - that is, on the door to OUR apartment - stating that patients must wear masks in the building.
Speaking of masks, and Covid, and so on - in my last post I talked a little bit about the currently mandated Covid mitigation strategies, and how people generally comply with the rules, and we don't see a lot of evidence of any anti-(Covid, mask, vaccine) people around - I just wanted to clarify that I was talking about our personal experience, here where we are, in our region (and also in Lecce where we were for Christmas, for that matter, which is to our south). Of course there are anti- (Covid, mask, vaccine) people in Italy - I don't want to give anyone the wrong impression that we're living in some kind of Covid-free paradise. There are areas of Italy - quite a few - where Covid is currently surging. While certain regions are back in the yellow zone, Molise is not one of them, thankfully; it is still in the lowest-risk white zone. I think this is in part because it is so rural; Puglia, where we spent Christmas, is also a white zone. Interestingly, we read that while Omicron is here, Delta is still the dominant strain in Italy - for now.
One more personal Covid bummer is that the Marche region currently has a high number of cases. That is the region where my great grandfather's hometown, Corinaldo, is located. I was hoping we would be able to take a drive up there sometime soon-ish; but I think it would be best to wait on that for now.
And then there are these people living in Bolzano who think they're protected from illness by all the fresh Alpine air, and who sincerely believe that if they do happen to get sick, they can simply treat it with "onion compresses, body cream[s] of thyme and myrtle, and drink[ing] a lot of tea." Bolzano, which - surprise! - has one of the highest Covid infection rates in Italy, is pretty far to the north of us. Aside from Covid and the weird healthcare beliefs of a majority of its population, Bolzano otherwise sounds like an interesting place to visit, but we won't be going there anytime soon.
We don't really have anything interesting planned to do for this week; my next citizenship-related appointment, for the purpose of applying for my Italian passport, is scheduled for Tuesday of next week, 1/11 (or, as we write here, 11/01 - something I always have to stop and think about when filling in or reading forms). This morning I took care of some basic household chores - vacuuming and then mopping the tile floors, as well as laundry - I'm on load #2 as I'm writing this.
When I got up at 5:30 or 6 AM this morning to use the facilities, I turned on load #1 before going back to bed; that way the load was done by the time I woke up for real around 9 AM. It really does take about two hours to do one load of wash; that just seems to be the norm here. I'm really not sure why European washing machines have such long cycles. The machines tend to be smaller capacity, too, according to my observations. I've tried running the machine on both the regular and the "eco" cycle, but that didn't make any difference in the amount of time it took to complete a load. Frankly, I'm not even sure what the "eco" button does on my machine. The weather has been very nice lately, in that it hasn't been raining and/or super windy; it looks like it will be sunny and mid- to upper-50s F for at least half of this week - in other words, good clothes drying weather.
I forgot to mention that when I went in to sign the registers at the town hall last week, I was also - finally! - given a copy of the trash and recycling schedule! Up until now, we've put out trash and recycling based on our guesses as to what our surrounding neighbors were placing outside for pickup. At last we have confirmation as to what specific items to put out for pickup on a given day, and on which holidays trash/recycling is not collected. I was also informed that the schedule will be changing in the beginning of the year, and I should be getting a copy of the new schedule in the mail (who knows when? because Italy). The funny thing is that last week, someone - presumably one of our landlords - taped a note on our door about what containers to put out on each day. The note was written in English, so someone must have helped them, or else they used a translation app.
Monday: "organico" (food trash/compostables)
Tuesday: "secco residuo" (non-recyclables, trash that doesn't fit into the other categories)
Wednesday: "plastica e metalli" (plastics and metal)
Thursday: "organico" (again)
Friday: alternates between "vetro" (glass) and "carta e cartone" (paper and cardboard)
Saturday: "pannolini e pannoloni" (baby diapers and adult incontinence products)
There is a restaurant in Termoli we'd like to try, maybe this week, for lunch - a time of day we suspect there wouldn't be many other people in the restaurant - called Yoshi Fusion Sushi. It's very near the Carrefour (supermarket) and the Happy Casa (home goods). Whenever we drive by it, it looks pretty empty. It's only open 12-3 during the afternoons, then opens again at supper time form 7 PM - 11PM (very common hours here). We're curious to see how the Asian food is here. We have to go out to Happy Casa at some point soon anyway, as Paolo has been on a kind of glass-breaking rampage...OK, perhaps "rampage" is a little strong; but he did manage to somehow break both a wine glass and a water glass in separate incidents today.
We have been watching TV shows in Italian with English subtitles - or rather, shows available via our Amazon Firestick. I mentioned previously that we watched the Italian version of Nero Wolfe on MHz Choice, which was really quite good. The downside of watching things on MHz Choice is that you can't change the streaming settings, so shows we watch through that subscription (which are almost all HD) use up more data per episode than I would like. Netflix is much better as far as that goes; if you adjust down to SD, you use much, much less data. We watched all three seasons of Suburra: Blood on Rome, which was excellent, I thought. Apparently it's based on a movie (that we have not seen). It has organized crime, gypsies, and corrupt Vatican officials - what could be better? It's also pretty violent, so definitely not a show for the kiddies. I personally enjoyed this show much more than I did The Sopranos, actually. We also just wrapped up a two-season documentary series called Rotten, which is about food production, and really made us think about some of the foods we consume and the effect our consumption has on other people around the world, as well as the environment. I don't know that watching TV shows in Italian is really helping us learn the language all that much, but it can't hurt, anyway.
One food-related item: peanut butter! Another item found on the "international" shelves at the big supermarket (we have not seen any peanut butter at any of the little mercati here in town). They had two kinds - a "crunchy" and a "creamy," each made by a different producer. I couldn't resist and chose the creamy one, as that's what I would eat at home. It was, by the way, close to €4 for a jar (in other words, a little pricey). I finally got around to tasting it yesterday...and do you know, it was pretty close to American, non-organic peanut butter (frankly I don't care for the organic kind because I don't like the way the oil separates out of it). I would say it was a bit less salty, and less sweet than the brand I normally buy in the US, but had just about the same creamy texture and peanuty flavor. Interestingly, the company listed on the label - Nick the Easy Rider - seems to be German. Nick appears to be an importer of some sort...the website, in both German and Italian, seems to lose something in translation...
And now, time for a little pranzo; I think there's a tuna melt calling my name...