AND EVEN MORE RANDOM THOUGHTS

NOVEMBER 6. 2003

Car insurance in Italy has an unusual choice…the sociopolitical coverage. I knew what the term meant when I saw it on the application, but couldn’t figure out how that term could apply to car insurance. Now we know that if you have this coverage, and there is a riot or demonstration, and your car gets damaged as a result, you will be reimbursed for the damage. We decide to skip this coverage…I think it cost about 80 euro per year. The chance of a riot or demonstration in San Venanzo is slim to none, and if there were to be some sort of demonstration scheduled in Perugia, or any other large city, we would certainly not take our car there…we probably wouldn’t go at all. But it is available for those who think this might be a problem.

Reason # 472 WHY WE LOVE LIVING IN ITALY

Today we stopped by the grocery store to pick up some bread. We had used the last of ours to make bruschetta, and since all the stores will be closed on Sunday, we needed to get bread tonight. The bakery in San Venanzo is open on Saturday morning, but closed in the afternoon. This gives them two full days off, since most stores are closed on Monday morning also. But I digress. Once in the Coop (pronounced coop, as in “chicken”), we found the sample girl, much like you would find in any stateside grocery store on Saturday. The major difference was, our sample girl was giving our free samples of 4 different types of new wine! We sampled, picked our favorite, and she put the bottle in our basket. It was only after we turned the corner that we discovered the price…2.70 euro!!!! Maybe this should be reason # 472 AND 473!

MISC

I think Art is becoming “Italianized” in some respects. He is starting to park crooked, facing the wrong direction, straddling the line, and in general, anyway he can. He is learning that if you don’t make a spot, someone else will! He does still stay in his own lane while driving.

LAUNDRY

We decided to do laundry today. It’s been two weeks since they started on the kitchen, hence two weeks since we’ve had our washing machine. We still had clothes, but since it was rainy and dreary today, it seemed like the right time. We knew of one self service Laundromat in Perugia, not far from the Italian school. Art was sure there would be a self-service laundry in Marsciano, but since we hadn’t yet seen one, I was sure there wasn’t. A phone call to our friend Donatella confirmed my suspicions.

The place in Perugia was right at one of the medieval gates into the city, and parking was in very short supply. We decided to drive down to Ponte San Giovanni and look there. If there is a self-service laundry there, we didn’t find it. We started to head home, but I decided I really wanted to get the laundry caught up, and that this was the day to do it. We drove back up to Perugia, and invented a parking spot just around the corner from the Laundromat. Luckily for us, this place had two of the large machines, and they were both free. Each machine cost 5.50 euro, and we made two loads, one for darks and one for whites and linens. After about thirty minutes, both loads were ready for the dryer, and again, we were lucky that there were two of the large machines, and that they were available. The cost for the dryers was also 5.50 euro, for twenty minutes! Since neither dryer was packed too full, the twenty minutes turned out to be enough. A few pairs of jeans were still damp around the waistband, but we decided they could finish drying at home.

We have no idea how much this would have cost us to take it to the local laundry. Last week Art took five shirts, one sweatshirt, and one pair of jeans to the laundry in San Venanzo for washing and drying only, and it cost fourteen euro. Not a bad price for seven items, I guess. Considering we paid twenty two euro for the laundry we did ourselves, I guess we saved some money, but it still seemed quite expensive. And we have a feeling that this may be the only self-service laundry in Perugia! Where do all those people have their laundry done? Do they all just take it to the regular laundry, or do they wash everything by hand? Maybe once we know more Italians, we’ll learn the answer.