Andy Rooney was a soldier in Trieste?

That's what they're telling me... We're putting together the America in Trieste walking tour and lots of interesting facts like this have been coming up. There was some other famous American too but now I can't remember who. My memory fails me.

Will let you know when I remember again. Here is some info on TRUST.

PS Sure, Henry James can count. He was born in the US.

Yeah, I'm Mediocre!

What other sport can give you THIS much satisfaction?? Here is a phone conversation I overheard this week:

"Yeah, uh huh, I was in the Barcolana last weekend."

PAUSE

"Mmmm Hmmm, yup. Finished it. and GUESS WHAT!!! We arrived, my CREW and I, in 644th place! Yes, an EXCELLENT result. Exactly in the middle of the rankings."

Sailing is one of the few sports (running is also like this) where you can compete with THE BEST of THE BEST and be PSYCHED to finish in the middle.

Barcolana Weekend

Finally some air around here! I can sweat for a reason rather than just because I exist!

We have gotten through another Barcolana weekend. This was my 9th. I didn't participate or anything. I normally don't, but it is a milestone every year, and one of two occasions for Trieste to wake up for a weekend before laying down its sleepy head for another season. (The Bavisela marathon is the spring counterpart to the Barcolana regatta in October). The Barcolana gets all the Triestini to dig in their winter clothes boxes (we do a change of season here where your summer clothes get put away for winter and vice versa) for their SLAM sailing jackets so they can put them on with their jeans and put the collar up (so cold! Must protect neck from unwanted drafts!!) so the reflective brand name shows.

The real sailors, of course, have their fancy team jackets on and matching pants. They have the added advantage of looking great for free! How the rest of us long to be one of them (without having to do any work-- unless you call hanging off the side of the boat to create weight work)!

Anyhoo, I went down to check out the action (sweet wind-stopper jacket, not slam, but just as conspicuous, a present from my mom, bless her!) and the dog was sniffing everything in sight and she was pulling pulling pulling and I was tugging back and people were tripping on her, and I was tripping on them, and the baby was sleeping in the marsupial on her papa's chest, oblivious to most of the goings on.

A radio station was broadcasting live with a few beautiful women dancing with short sleeves and tummies showing and mini skirts but no one was too worried about their catching a draft (foreign girls, myself included, don't catch drafts, but these girls were freezing with smiles on their faces). That scene made the place seem a little depressing. You just can't enjoy girls dancing when they're outside like you are and you're freezing and you're all covered up and they're definitely not dancing hard enough to get warm, and it's all just to make the radio station look sexy? Didn't get that.

Going downtown during Barcolana weekend makes you feel like you're living the city, though, and that's definitely worth doing.

Dear Summer,

You can go now. Um, there's the door!

Did you hear me?

Come on, put a fire under it (well, on second thought...)

See you next year!

Love, Karoline

Feeling Homesick?

A friend passed me THIS LINK. You can practice your Italian and get Oreos at the same time. But, can I just say something? If you're missing any of these items AT ALL, I think you and me need to have a talk.

Happy Eating!

All Clear- Stalkers on Holiday

Just an update. One of our stalkers was caught and the other seems to be on holiday. :)

The Association has two stalkers at the moment

People think that since we are a library with lots of English books in it, there used to be an American consulate down the hallway (did you know that Trieste had one of the first Consulates in the world?? The first one was in something like 17something something... ), most of us speak English and happen to be from America, that we ARE America and therefore should be stalked.

But we are NOT America! So please, don't send us anymore weird letters with crazy pictures on them! For one, I know you hate America, but I also know you love it, otherwise you would not want to be in the Army so bad. Also, it's not our fault your ex dumped you. Also, no, I cannot put you in touch with Obama or fly you to his office with a plane from the Aviano base.

No, we are not America, we are a cultural association trying to get by. Send checks, money orders, loose change, but quit sending us wacko letters!!

Finally Went to the Beach

And it wasn't so bad. We took the baby to the spiaggetta, where the little ones go. It's one of the few places where you can enter the water gradually, so it's awesome if you have a baby in your arms. Since it was her first time, I wanted to ease her into it, and that's tough if you jump in to where you can't touch.

It was a success by the way. The water was pretty chilly, but it is SO HOT AROUND HERE these days that WHO CARES.

I feel like a better mom now, at least according to Triestino standards. Phyoo!

Not been to the Beach yet?

I have been bad. It is July and I have not been to the beach once. I was reminded of this yesterday when I was teaching some English to business people and we were talking about our vacations. Of course that's what's on the Triestinis' minds lately. The days have been beautiful, so who can blame them. What came out of these conversations yesterday was how much vacation these people have!! Mamma mia-- some were going on 3-week vacations in August, others had a week in May, two in July, and the office is closing in August for a week! One person was actually complaining about how LITTLE vacation time she has left (she has been on 3 major trips this year!)

What a loser I felt like. Here I practically make my own schedule and I haven't even taken the baby to the beach. But that's probably it. In theory I have all this "time" but I don't really feel like I have that much at all. In fact, the days fly past and I have stuff to do on all of them, including weekends. Most of it is work.

What am I doing wrong?

Not that I want to be an employee again. I have definitely outgrown that gig. But... I don't know. I need to think about this more.

A note about the beach, though.

There's no sand. It's rock and cement. Many Triestinis say the sand is "unhygienic" (for real!).

The best part of the beach is playing in the sand, right? So maybe baby isn't missing so much. We're going to have to make a plan for the weekend. I want to make sand castles. I guess that means going to Grado or Lignano. But then there's the problem of traffic.
Hmmph.

Postal Service is Half Price in Slovenia

Did you know that a regular postage stamp that costs 60 cents in Italy costs 38 cents in Slovenia? Scandalous, no? I just sent a packet of info to Lubljana where I am applying for the baby's passport (can't get an appointment in Milan until the end of July and it's 4 hours away, Lubljana is only an hour and a half away and they had openings immediately). I sent a non-standard A4 envelope FULL of documents and it cost me (dig this!) 58 cents to send. Plus the post office is open Monday to Friday all day until 7pm and Saturday morning. I'm pretty sure my package got to the Embassy about 8 seconds after I sent it. I'm only telling you this because Italian postal service sucks big time  I am, frankly, incredibly pleased with myself for finding this out.

And what I learn, I immediately pass on to you, dear reader.

Buying Naked Property

Need an investment opportunity? In Italy you have the choice of buying an apartment or house outright or buying it "naked", which means you get the house for a discount. Here is the catch. The owner is still in it, and not only that, but they have the right to stay in it (and you can't) for the rest of their life. Prices are adjusted depending on the occupant's age.

As far as the seller is concerned, this is a great deal for people who need cash outright and have no heirs to pass their property to. So it's a win-win. Unless the occupant outlives you. Then it's a bummer.

We're thinking about doing this. Interest rates suck. Why not?

Simple living is what it's all about

When people come visit me, one of the things they comment on is how much they like the lifestyle and habits they pick up while they're here. Sometimes it takes a trip away from home to give you the courage to do something drastic with your life, like lose weight, or clean up your financial messes so that you can travel abroad more often. For me, moving to Trieste meant new beginnings as far as family (I met Sweetie, moved to Trieste and married him all in 8 months, 8 years ago) and finances. I was happy to downsize my everything, get out of debt (got rid of my car, paid off car loan and credit card with money I got for it, and paid off school loans as fast as I could once I moved here-- it took me about four years), and buy an apartment that we could afford (we have 8 years to go on a 15-year mortgage, and that's debt too, but different).

At some point Sweetie and I (also a Simple kind of guy) made frugal living a kind of game. It started out as Hey, let's see how low we can keep the thermostat in winter (I'm from Wisconsin, so Triestine winters seem like Florida to me). Answer: 15 degrees C, after which we let the furnace kick on. Then we said Hey, let's ONLY keep the lights on that we're using. All others OFF! Then, Hey, let's see how long we can go without eating out, and then Hey, let's see how many Family Fun for Free things we can do from now on, and finally,  Hey, let's see if we can live on just one salary (even when we had two decent ones).

And that was good timing, because about a year after we started, I lost my job, and, shortly after, so did my husband.

Well, that frugality gave immediate, and long-lasting results which made it possible for me to start my own little free-lance business (translating, teaching, language consulting) and allowed Sweetie to play full-time Dad for the first six months of Eva's life. Don't get me wrong, though. Living simply isn't for everyone, and we received enough criticism from friends who thought we were ridiculous for trying it that we eventually kept the project to ourselves. Our circle of friends changed somewhat, too, in that we started to hang around more with outdoorsy types and like-minded people as a result of our lifestyle change.

Now that we're both working again (as of exactly one week), we are keeping up the same lifestyle. We meet friends for hikes rather than dinner, and we still play our save money games. Now we have added washable diapers to the mix. As far as temperatures go, with the baby we put our limit at 18C. What awful parents we are, I thought, when I went to a friend's house with baby the same age and saw the thermostat was at 25C, but felt better when I had to take off Eva's sweater because she was dripping baby sweat.

Baby Parking a success, but we hate calling it that

I decided that I will just call the Baby Parking I chose by its correct name "Pika Poka" or Miss Samantha's. Pika Poka means Ladybug in Slovene, which is one of the reasons I chose it, because Miss Samantha, the owner, is from the Slovene minority and will speak it to your little ladybug if you ask her. And of course I did because I'm one of those kinds of moms, happy to force extra languages on the little one until she is old enough to completely rebell and speak only in pig-latin.

We put her there two days and it was great. There were only like 3 other kids and they were old enough to learn from, but not so old that it was weird. I'm so happy for the baby. All those cool toys (way cooler than at home) and other kids to play with. Good stuff.

More soon.

Baby Parking

This week I have to find a place to put the baby while Daddy goes back to work after a crisis-induced hiatus. If you want to put your kids in daycare, there a few choices. The cheapest and best-regarded is the public route. These are the daycare centers that are run by the city. To get into one you need to apply for a place in January. You rank them one to five and there is a week where you can go and visit them, check out the distance, cleanliness (something I don't worry much about, but others around here seem to find importantissimo), activities, etc. and make your choice. Hubby visited them (all about the same) and we ranked according to distance. One of them is less than a five-minute walk from my house, for example. Ever since I ranked that one as number one, I have passed several times with the dog and happened to see lunch ladies in hair nets, teachers (or "educators" as they call them here) and various staff members outside sneaking smokes (better than in the bathroom I suppose, unlike the HOSPITAL, which is REEK-A-LICIOUS in the WC!). They don't appear to be doing it at the same time, which I guess is the important thing. Those little taters need supervision, after all.

The public daycare centers provide free lunch, free diapers (most are not particularly interested in dealing with washables, which would mean putting the dirty one in a plastic bag that you provide and then snapping on another one that you provide, but whatever) and the price is based on how much you make.

You get word in May if you get in to a public daycare center for the next fall (September or October). If you don't, then you can either leave them with the baby's grandparents (lots of people do this here and grandparents often feel it is their "right" to have your kids full-time while you're at work) or leave them at any number of private daycare centers (cost about twice as much as public ones, don't provide lunch or diapers).

If you only need a few hours here or there for coverage, there are also "Baby Parking" centers. Yep, they say it in English, as in "Porto il mio figlio oggi in Baby Parking." These are what we are checking on for this week. They cost something like 7 euros an hour and you can drop off and pick up when you want.

I will let you know how my research goes.

Should I breathe new life into this blog?

I think this blog seems to have a life of its own. No thanks to me, of course...

But I feel like I can say some new things (when I can't, that's when I put my blogs on hybernate). I have a little Triestina baby now which gives me lots of fodder for writing about life in Trieste, but also a lot less time to do it.
Hmmmph.

If you have a baby in Trieste, though, you should know that you can get up to 110 euros back for money you spend at the pharmacy on your baby. There are two official pharmacies (piazza oberdan and another one in Viale xx September). All you have to do is keep your receipts and then fill out a form and turn those babies in and you will get that money back. Hey, it's not gonna feed your B.O.J. (Bundle of Joy) forever, but 100 euros is 100 euros. :) We bought formula and I think it got us through two months. Not bad!

Also there's something called Bonus bébé where you can get money just for having a baby (it's about time someone considered having a baby WORK!), and another thing where you can get discounts on your basic bills at home because you have a baby. I guess these are what they call social AMORTIZZATORI (Shocks, like on a bicycle. Soften up the road under you, or something like that).

I am not going to complain. Free money is free money and there is no stigma involved. If you DON'T take advantage of these things, people sort of feel sorry for you.

More more more soon!