First Post -- Waiting For My Coffee Maker!

Italy is a charming country, filled with the nicest, warmest people.  The fruits and vegetables are uncommonly delicious. Roberto and his wife Lucia, my vegetable vendors in Turin’s Spezia open-air farmers market, are uncommonly warm and kind.  I almost don’t want to buy potatoes if his hands haven’t selected them for me.  I know that sounds ridiculous, but try, then judge.  Same with artichokes, green beans, eggplant, tomatoes, parsley, catalonia (an alien-looking salad green).  My butcher, Nicola, is similarly fantastic.  Despite his anti-immigrant stance (who’s he talking to?  I wasn’t born here), his little packs of 6 eggs for 1€ are fresh, his pork is freshly-sliced and tender.

Unfortunately, I will be seeing none of these people today, Monday.  I’m waiting for a package to maybe show up.  Same as Friday.  Same as Thursday.  Surprisingly, same as much of last week!  If you are not home when you ring your doorbell, the package goes either to package-purgatorio, an SDA (delivery) warehouse in Settesimo Torinese, a nearby town; perhaps to some older Italian gentlemen wearing blue suits, fedoras, and carrying violin cases; or maybe you get lucky and it goes back to the original shipper again.  If you’re my dad and shipped me 3 boxes of my kitchen supplies, say goodbye to several hundred dollars. Thanks, Dad!

You may think that a phone call to the shipping company might help.  Hahahahaha!  First, be sure to add money to your cell phone, because calls to customer support cost money.  They’re like 1-900 calls in Italy, except you don’t get a happy ending.  Take today’s call(s) to GLS, the shipping company currently delivering my coffee maker, which I forever regret ordering because of this shipping thing.

Ring, Ring:
“gobbledygook-in-Italian-that-might-say-that-this-call-will-cost-money-Press-1-if-you-want-to-try-to-find-your-packages-or-hang-up-and-just-try-to-use-our-absolutely-terrible-website.”

OK, having been to their non-functional website, I press 1.

“Per servizio in italiano, 1. For service in English 2”

Woo-hoo!   I get service in English!

“Operatorio numero Uno-Tre-Cinque-Sette-Due (1, 3-5, 7, 2)”, a pause, *click*

I’m disconnected.

A message pops up on my cell phone saying that the call has cost 1.36€.  

I try this repeatedly until I get a person to answer.  She only speaks Italian, so I struggle through in my 1st year Italian.  “I have package.  I home.  Where package?”  She quickly reassures me that despite what the website says (I express surprise that the website works for her), my package is sent out for delivery today.  By quickly, I mean, she speaks like she just contracted diarrhea and needs to finish the call before she can sprint to the bathroom.

It turns out that SPEAKING  LOUDLY  AND  SLOWLY is not terrible guidance for speaking to foreigners.  Try it if you find a non-native English speaker.  Maybe they won’t reply with “Yes!” the way that I seem to with this lady.  I let her know that I’d like some sort of delivery window so I can see Roberto and Lucia, maybe even have lunch with friends.

“Ha patienza.  L’autista arriverá oggi.”

Have patience, the driver will arrive today.  WTF, Italy!?