Randomness in Ivrea
It seems whenever I go out for a walk on the weekends in Ivrea, something’s always going on. Last week it was a foot race of some kind. Today it was some kind of concert. Since I tend to sleep in on Saturdays, I usually catch the end of whatever is going on. Today I was able to take a quick snapshot with my phone-cam:
Slept in this morning, woke up in time to get a couple of errands done. First was to get my cell phone set up. A cell phone in Italy can be called a “telefonino,” or in other words, a small phone. It was a bit of a challenge (think about how many cell phone plans there are in the US!), but I ended up with a Vodafone plan. I know that SMS is 15 cents, but phone calls are something like 50 cents a minute to the USA (!) – I’ll most likely just use it for SMS.
Then it was off to get a haircut. Let me say, trying to explain what you want done with your hair in a foreign language is a true test of your language ability. I failed miserably. They had to haul out the book of pictures, and I pointed to what style I wanted. I now know, however, that “corto” means short. Of course, you can only say “corto” so many times before you’re completely shorn. I think I provided a week’s worth of entertainment for the hairdressers. But in the end my hair was cut and I’m not bald.
I inquired about a used bike at the bike store, and from what I could tell, new bikes run from 350 Euro and up, but the cheapest bike he had in the store (it was small) was 850 Euro. And it seems that used bikes are sort of potluck in terms of when and what kind he can acquire. Mind you, this is what I think he said.
After all of this, I decided to find a dizionario. As an aside, a librerio is where you buy books, while a biblitoteca is where you borrow them (a library, to use the English word). Luckily, we had gone over the difference in Italian class, so I was spared the confusion. The dizionario was easy enough to buy, but the other book I wanted was a little more difficult to find.
Syd has a book called lo zingarelli, which is an Italian dictionary with a lot of pictures. I wanted one after seeing her copy, but I forgot important things, like the fact that there are two kinds: a big one and a little one. So I went into this bookstore and asked for a “dizionario con disegni”—a dictionary with drawings—because that was the best way I could think of describing the book. After the person behind the counter disappeared into the storage room, I turned around and there it was…lo zingarelli. But this one was huge and came with a CD-ROM, all for the low price of 80 Euro…
After much broken Italian and hand gestures and the like on my part, I was brought into the storage room to speed up the process. And lo-and-behold, they found lo zingarelli minore (the small one), which was just what I wanted. Just to explain, this book doesn’t have a picture for each word, but it does have diagrams of more difficult concepts (such as a volcano) with the various parts described. It’s all in Italian, so I’ll probably be using the regular dizionario (or the internet) in most cases, but this is a good book to have when describing more technical or involved material. I think it will come in handy over the next two years.
My next goal was to find another bike store I’d heard about, but I was unable to locate it. So instead I went to the supermarket and bought some things I had forgotten the other day when I was at the market.
Tonight there was a party in one of the rooms for the students and faculty. Not many professors showed up (I saw two), but then again I was a couple of hours late (a 15-minute nap turned into 3 hours) and they may have already headed home. Now I’m up way past my bedtime courtesy of the same nap.
Just did the dishes, so I think it’s time to turn in. Ciao!