Update from Torino

According to plan I took the train to Torino in the 3rd of June. Since I still had the problem with the pulled muscle I tried to minimize the amount of walking that I had to do. I took a taxi to the train station rather than the bus. At the entrance to the station there was a policeman that took everyone’s temperature with one of those non-contact thermometers. The train was arranged to maintain social distancing and of course everyone was required to wear a mask. When I arrived in Torino I saw that there they were taking everyone’s temperature before they were allowed to go to the train platform. Since Laura was using the opportunity to get her first visit at a parrucchiera (hairdresser) I took a taxi to her house since I had a set of keys. Fortunately the woman the comes once a week to clean the house was there so she came down and carried my suitcase up the 3 flights of stairs.

Laura had a cane in the house that belonged to her father in law which I have been able to use to reduce the strain on my already strained muscle so that I can limp around the house. I am not a great deal of help in the preparations other than making suggestions and providing encouragement. A guy from a moving company came on Monday and gave us an estimate for the move to Bologna which we found acceptable. The process of moving is going to be interesting. Since her house is on the 3rd floor without an elevator they will use a type of truck that has a resemblance to a hook and ladder firetruck but with a platform. That will work here in Torino where all of the stuff can be carried out to the balcony. But in the narrow street in Bologna it will be a different story. While there is a very small elevator, almost all of the stuff will need to be unloaded from the truck and then carried up two flights of stairs to the apartment. They will apply for a permit with the city of Bologna to temporarily block half of the street and unload the truck and then move it to the apartment.

Another thing is that here they rarely have closets, they have armoires. Basically you move your closets to the new house by disassembling them and then reassembling them at the destination. I feel sorry for the moving guys. That’s got to be a tough job.

So now we have a bunch of boxes and have started packing things up. Since Laura has lived in Torino her entire life and has had things passed down to her from many different relatives there is a LOT of stuff; enough dishes and silverware to start a restaurant and enough books to start a library so there are a lot of difficult choices to make. Also like a lot of women she has an astounding quantity of shoes and boots (I counted about 100 pair), scarves, sweaters and almost everything imaginable. She was able to part with some of the shoes and garments but still we have 3 big boxes and counting full of shoes and boots and one fairly big box filled with only scarves. So far we’ve packed 17 boxes and I would guess we’ll have perhaps 10 more before we’re done.

Then when we arrive at Bologna it will probably take a couple of weeks to have everything reasonable organized. We will still have to buy some things there. I already have a list in Amazon and we will probably make a trip to Ikea to buy some things before long. After the movers leave with all of the stuff we’ll put the two cats in their cages and drive to Bologna. That will be 3 hours of so of complaining cats in the car. I feel sorry for the poor cats and us.

In the last post I forgot to add a Baci quote – so here are two:

Pecchiamo insieme, che all’anima fa bene.
Let’s sin together, it is good for the soul.

Vladimirovich Mayakovsky

L’amore non dura se togli ogni lotta.
Love doesn’t last if you take all the fight away.

Ovidio

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 11th, 2020 at 7:35 am and is filed under Uncategorized. 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.