Saturday, June 29th The duties
Saturday, June 29th
The duties of that morning were far from curatorial or preservation or even archaeological: Signette was going grocery shopping, and our assistance that morning was to assist with that.
Have I told you about Signette? The Lab Directress - or, as she liked to put up on the white-board "Dittatrice", Dictatress. She did not have the forceful personality one might expect of a dictatress, though, being one of those women who voluntarily wears pink, and who giggles and gossips in mid-thirties as in midteens - an uneasy melding of the matron and the coquette. She reminded me of nothing so much as a middle-aged church lady.
Anyway, she was the one responsible for providing us with lunch and breakfast. American-style food shopping, that is to say, supermarkets, are yet rare in Italy, but Signette had managed to find one (the only one in a fifty mile radius?) and insisted on doing all our shopping there.
You wouldn’t think that Italy - that Europe, for that matter - would stand for something like processed cheese. You wouldn’t think that in a country where fresh solid bread is so readily available that processed sliced white bread in plastic bags would even be sold in stores!
And you would certainly not think that even if such American delicacies were available, that anyone in their right minds and with a sufficient supply of money would dream of purchasing them voluntarily!
Well.
As an American budget traveller in Europe, I was always torn in my feelings about supermarkets. On the one hand, they are an abomination, but on the other hand, they are so tempting in their convenience: row after row of cheap food that can be easily purchased without speaking the language.
November 3rd, 2002 at 2:29 pmI will also note than in Hungary it is spelled "Szupermarket".
November 3rd, 2002 at 2:30 pmAnd I will note that in Russia restaurant is spelled Ðåñòîðàí, and that that makes me giggle. Pectopah, pectopah.
November 4th, 2002 at 5:51 pmI wants a goldfish named Pectopah.
November 4th, 2002 at 7:37 pm