The Rasoio (the razor)

Razor! Doesn’t seem like an interesting subject but in this case there is a bit of learning of how things work in Italy in a totally different sense. The story begins with my electric razor. It’s one of those Norelco things with three rotating heads. I don’t shave very often either here or in California because I’m a little lazy and usually don’t have anyone to impress during the week. Also in Italy you see a lot of people who are not too diligent about shaving. Of course it’s probably different in Milan where everyone hopes to be a fashion model or something. Anyway one day I noticed that one of the heads of my razor was misaligned. No problem, I know how to fix that; open the razor, remove the restraint that keeps the head attached to the razor and adjust the offending head. Simple. However the drain to the lavandino (bathroom sink) not to be confused with the lavello (kitchen sink) was not functioning properly and so was not in place. Before I knew it, three pieces of my razor had fallen in to the drain. Hoo boy, now what?

It’s a pedestal sink and the sink rests on a pedestal and is attached to the wall. At first I thought that I would need to loosen the bolts connecting the sink to the wall so that I could move the pedestal so that it still supported the sink but would allow my access to that u-shaped pipe under every sink. That would be a major task and neither Cesarina or her husband Roberto had the tools for the job. After I looked more closely I saw that the Italian system had anticipated this problem and there was a plug in that u-shaped pipe. I just needed to remove that and I could extract the razor parts.

But the plot thickens. There were no pliers (pinze) in the house. So I went of to the hardware store to buy the garden variety, regular household pliers that are so common in the U.S. Well, surprise, these DO NOT EXIST in Italy. In fact I checked an Italian website for every variety of tools with the same result. So I bought a pair of pliers designated as plumbers pliers and now all is right with the world.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 2nd, 2012 at 3:42 am and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.