There is a creaking, grinding roll-up metal door that is activated about 6.30am ...near my bedroom here in Genova.
It's a feet-on-the-floor explosion of sound. To give you a sense of it, an army would be proud of this vehicle of noise when waking and/or scaring the living daylights out of their new recruits or prisoners of war.
Some mornings I hear it, some mornings I don't. This morning I woke, completely heart-thumpingly disorientated. I lay there a while and then, sure enough, some kind of pressure-building noise followed as the cafe primed its coffee-machine with the required level of explosiveness ...perhaps.
I stumbled out of bed to see if I had missed the possible thunderstorms predicted for while I slept but they didn't come. It's overcast but that won't hurt after yesterday's 32 celsius, with humidity of 76%.
The kitchen window is open, next to my laptop and the breeze is almost refreshing. The 'ciao's' have begun and people sound lively and engaged in this language I love. So upbeat, even at 7.37am.
Meanwhile friends here are rebelling. Maybe they're pretending but some have decided it's time I spoke Italian. Of course, I agree but language acquisition has never been the thing I am best in. Two years in Turkey and I remember the Turks were amused by my using a very English pronunciation in my simple greetings.
Learning Dutch hasn't gone well either. Maybe there is some forgotten colonial impulse buried deep in my New Zealand genes but I tend to begin in English in Belgium and mostly they reply in the same. Actually, they reply in English when they hear my Dutch too. I have come to believe that my attempts are so impossibly bad that they are found to be abominable.
But anyway, English is a useful language to travel with ... or not. Depending on what one believes about language.
So ... last night I began working through the 200+ Italian flashcard exercises I have stored on my computer. While the language itself is often straight-forward, in that it is pronounced as it appears, I realised that words like 'di' and 'a', with their multiple uses, could be troublesome.
'di' (that Italian word that isn't my name) = of, from, about, than, to, with, by. And then there is 'a' = to, at, in, for, with, by.
The road could be long. Here too, the 'i' sounds like my 'e'and so Di of me becomes Dee. Although it is the same in Dutch and so I have adjusted to that kind of thing.
I can see how this language-studying commitment is a necessary commitment because to post graffiti without being sure of what is saying is a risk I don't often take. However this one refers to, or was written by, Melina Riccio. Hers is an interesting story for sure ...
The espresso and cappuccino cups are rattling in the cafes below, a man is telling a story so amusing he can barely squeeze the words out through the laughter he is trying to control. It seems like old friends are at the cafe, meeting on their way to work perhaps, and talking about things I don't understand ...
Buongiorno ... it is morning here in Genova.
