Small Mystery Solved

As part of a general policy of keeping offensive weapons off the street, Italy severely limits carrying a knife.  You have to have a legitimate reason to be carrying the knife, and it is best if it is carried in a way that it clearly could not be deployed in an altercation.  Italians are very aware of this, in much the same way that Americans think about carrying handguns.

Yet long, very sharp knives are in use everywhere.  You aren't carving prosciutto without one!  What do you do when you need your knife sharpened?

It turns out that one option is for the knife sharpener to come to you.  I was walking over to Antonella's for the day's groceries.  A man wearing an apron entered before me, negotiated quickly with Antonella, and left.  I didn't think anything of it until I was walking back across the piazza and saw him working on her knives.

He and his co-worker had a small hatchback with a custom fold-out work table.  Their honing equipment was mounted on the table and powered by the car.

Simple!

A small victory

Yesterday, for the first time, I managed to finish the tutorial work during the tutorial (usually I have to finish the last two or three questions on my own at home).

It was a really satisfying tutorial because it built on itself. Each question, instead of being about how to do one particular command, was about how to build one part of a text-based video game. 

I still have until next week to work on it before it gets a mark, so I'm planning to use the weekend to look it over and try to streamline some of the code, because I think that I can reduce the number of lines. However, I most certainly am not getting rid of the version I have right now, because even if it might take the longer route, it spits out the right values. 

Florence

The Local Bookshop

I've dropped the ball on describing some of the places I shop regularly for basics like groceries, medical supplies, and so on. Tonight, I present the bookshop where we get school supplies, have items scanned/faxed/copied (particularly in volume...we have a low-budget printer in the house, but copies and scans are slow, and I've never figured out the fax), buy wrapping paper, and more.

Sergio runs the copier

Behind Sergio are all the notebooks, erasers, binder covers, and so on

Welcome to Sergio's place. Tucked into the alley and built into the foundations of the Duomo, Sergio is a local character who is known for his moodiness. On bad days, you might get a grunt. But on good days? There's no one more smiley or liable to burst into song as he walks through the piazza. A kindly soul, and well loved here in town.

The children's section

His shop is crammed from top to bottom with a variety of office supplies, tourist items, books, specialty pens, calendars, packing materials, and more. When closed, it looks like a few barn doors in a wall...as is usual here, there are no exterior signs.

Love,

Alexandra

OKTuderFest 1.0

This year, the powers that be decided to stage Todi's version of Oktoberfest. We had live music in various corners, street food, dining tables in the piazza, local restaurants with recipes featuring beer, and...beer stalls!

We had to laugh at the pretzels, though: the local bakery they used knows how to make fantastic breads (and it's where we get our panettone at Christmas), but pretzels were a sealed book to them. Proper pretzels of course must be boiled to produce the skin and then baked lightly, allowing the chewy outside and soft interior. The local version was cooked (not burned, but rather dried) to the point of being crispy like a snack pretzel!

Michael tried several different beers, which he declared to be delicious, and we had some Sicilian snacky foods for dinner. Activities included a "beer relay" (it appeared to be that teams were supposed to try all the beers on offer, and the fastest to finish won a prize), "beer pong" (don't know if it's the same as in the US), face painting for the kids, and more.

This is the "beer relay" announcement

Local businesses decorated their shop windows with yellow balloons clustered to form steins, with white balloons on top for the foam; larger versions were scattered around town to add to the festivities.

The weather, though, was appropriately brisk for an Oktoberfest, and we decided to warm up inside!

Love,

Alexandra

Airport Acrobatics

Jeremy and I have a 0730 flight from Stansted, so the obvious thing is the dreaded airport hotel.  The Radisson Blu, in our case because it is walking distance from the terminal.

We got to the hotel, and from the check in area you can see the top of a blue backlit tower with dark objects in it.  A three story high tower in the middle of the atrium, enclosed in pexiglass.  "What is that?" asked Jeremy.  Since of course I didn't know, I gave a standard (i.e., ridiculous) fatherly answer: "Wine rack."

The joke was on me.  It is a wine rack.

Wine is retrieved acrobatically, and artistically, on wires, by the staff.  Magically floating up, swimming back down headfirst, walking on the glass like Spider-Man...

Almost made it worth the drink prices.

Happy in Helmsley

This is a young man who has just finished elevenses (cream tea, in his case).