Now that’s Italian!

Friday

In Assissi there are churches of every shape and hew: pink, yellow, striped, you name it. It is, in fact, a gorgeous little town, fresh and clean and restored (especially following the 1997 earthquake), ready to accept the pilgrimage of those in search of the St. Francis aura (and his remains) that is so evident in everything from the souvenirs to the frescoes on the thirteenth century church walls.

There is also a lovely little piazza where you can, after a cultural-artistic indulgence, sit back and contemplate the wonders of a peach and blueberry gelato. If you run out of cash, you can hop over to the ATM machine, slip your visa card right inside, get a printed receipt documenting your 250 E withdrawal (cash flows fast and loose when you’re vacationing) and wait and wait and wait… and watch the cash NOT emerge. What then?

I tried banging on the (closed for the day) bank door only to wake the lethargic guard who then fetched the signora in charge who reassured me that indeed, the international line hadn’t been working and so they weren’t able to pay out the 250 E. But, prego! I have the receipt showing that my account has been debited by this amount! A famous Italian shrug. Alright, alright, let’s negotiate the Italian way. Signora, I am going to go back to the US this Monday and I will surely find that I have $300 less in my account. Then what? Ah, she tells me, then my bank will write to her bank and they will straighten it all out.

Now I am not dumb. I know that the young teller in the little branch bank on the corner of Gammon and Mineral Point in Madison Wisconsin already got confused when I asked her to forward the down payment for the farmhouse rental. No way is she going to know how to get in touch with the non-English speaking signora in Assissi to straighten anything out. But I am told not to worry – the transaction probably never really happened! Paper? What’s a piece of paper? Go ahead, try it again, it’ll work this time!And so I did, and it worked and I am running on hope that she is right about the failed first transaction and that I will never have to do business with the bank in Assissi again. But you never know.