Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Ah...va bene...

Zev and Howard had to ride in the SAAB on the back of the tow truck, so mum and I could ride in the truck next to Dennis.

As I type this our car is still in Italy, near Venice somewhere. Luckily, our wonderful Deutsch insurance company, ADAC (some of the best advice we received when moving here was to use ADAC- awesome value), will ship our car from Italy to Germany sometime in the next two weeks. ADAC gave us a rental to get back home to Germany from Italy. Being a one car family isn't all that bad, because now that Zev installed a little basket on the back of my bike, I just ride my bike to German class- just like all the locals!
Cousin Christie made some AWESOME Italian coffees!!
Some of you may know that "va bene" is translated from Italian to English as meaning "it'll be alright" or "no worries" or something along those lines. Usually it is said with a shrug and hands lifted in the air. I (Fi) actually had an Italian bus driver tell me "va bene" in just this manner, when I asked him (at 1245 am after we had literally walked the length of Venice) when the 1230 bus was meant to arrive. (In case you are interested, the scheduled bus never came- we caught the next one and no one seemed to mind. La Dolce Vita remember- just enjoy life and smile). So of course, the next day, when the clutch in Zev's SAAB went out in a little Italian village on our way home to Germany, I just HAD to shrug my shoulders and say "va bene." Really, all of us keeping cool about being stranded in Italy right around siesta time on a Friday afternoon (especially Zev- he is SO CALM under pressure!) is what helped us make the most of the situation. In fact, we even met some lovely people along the way, such as the tow truck driver, Dennis (seen here in the pics), who was due to get married in a week and take his new bride to America, or our eccentric taxi driver who drove us to the rental car company and who almost knocked a guy on his scooter over after beeping the horn and waving his hands and saying all sorts of things in Italian. (Zev laughed his head off in the back seat while I was trying to speak Spanish/ Italian to the taxi driver and explain where we needed to go.) The poor guy on the scooter was so jolted from the taxi driver tooting his horn right behind him, that the visor on his helmet fell over his eyes and he temporarily couldn't see! The taxi driver did comment that he didn't think the man on the scooter was Italian because an Italian would know to get out of the way....va bene, like I said.) After a delay of about 5 hours which really wasn't too bad, we still managed to drive through the gorgeous mountains between Italy and Austria to catch up with Zev's little cousin and God-daughter, Christie, who is working over the summer at a hotel near Folgaria. Ah the excitement of travel!!

2 comments:

Rebekah RUst said...

hmmm looks like you guys have been busy this summer :)

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