(not necessarily in that order)
I’m not entirely fluent in Italian, but I’ve spent enough almost fluent years that some phrases come to me in Italian instead of English. They just feel more right.
“Ecco fatto” is an example. I finally went through my accumulation of notes on random slips of paper and got them organized them into categories, which certainly feels like an accomplishment.
In English I could say, “done!” or “finished!” But “ecco fatto” somehow captures much more completely the utter satisfaction of the moment.
I stumbled upon the group, Urban Theory, a few months ago. They intrigued me right from the start and I grew steadily more fascinated with them week by week.
Now I’m ready to acknowledge that I’m a total fan.
Every day I’m on the lookout for their latest Facebook story or reel, and I’m bummed if too many days go by without something new.
Their dancing (it’s called “tutting”) is amazing, and I find the precision absolutely thrilling, but I also love their free and easy social media presence. The fact that they’re Italian is like the icing on the cake!
We saw this sign in front of a café in Lugano this morning and it made us chuckle. So I decided to share it with you.
Translated it says: “Life is that thing that begins after coffee.”
Lord knows I’ve had plenty of days where this felt all too true! ☕
Does Mercury retrograde also affect laundry?!? All I know is I spent hours in the laundry room today and only got one load washed.
The washing machine looks deceptively normal, but pretty much everything about the process is a challenge.
The money goes into a black box that looks like something from the last century; the coins go in and it starts, but you really have no idea what’s actually going on.
For example, I came back expecting the load to be finished, but it still looked wet even though the door was open. So, I closed the door to see if it would resume. It didn’t, but I couldn’t open the door anymore. I finally pushed some buttons in frustration and…it started up again — from the beginning! Why, I have no idea.
Then, the symbols on the machine are different, but when you try to read the instructions they’re in Italian.
I spent a lot of time studying them because the second time I came back — after setting a timer to be sure and arrive before it finished — the machine had stopped, with the door closed, and nothing I did would get it to go again.
Finally, in desperation I added another two coins — and it started…at the beginning yet again. At this point I knew I couldn’t leave; I had to stay and try to catch the moment when I would be able to open the door and take out my clothes.
Actually, the instructions are in Italian if you’re lucky — sometimes they’re only in German! (The photo below isn’t very clear but it doesn’t really matter because most of us wouldn’t be able to read it anyway.)
I won’t bore you with every detail, but I did finally figure out how to get the washing machine to complete its full cycle and let me get my clothes out.
Bottom line? I truly do love the multilingual reality that is Switzerland, but it does make things more difficult when it comes to laundry.
We’re at that stage of the process where it’s feeling like maybe we did, indeed, bite off more than we can chew.
I mean, we’re helping to launch the new Ananda music app; planning for seven weeks away; preparing our place for a guest to stay while we’re gone; recording the live performance of the Oratorio on Good Friday; then leaving for Europe three days after that.
And somewhere in the midst of all this I’m supposedly practicing flute; working on my voice; brushing up on my Italian; resting; meditating; exercising; and being balanced and mindful.
Yeah, right!
But, sure enough, the only solution is to just keep going (or chewing, that is!), in the belief that I will be able to swallow it all down….eventually!
There are a few choice Italian phrases that I continue to fall back on, because they’re somehow way better in Italian than in English.
One is “che stufa.” It translates to “fed up”, but che stufa really gets at what I have been feeling today.
It’s kind of ironic because everything is going well, but I seem to have reached my limit for sitting around in a hospital bed doing basically nothing day after day after day.
Maybe it’s because we’re getting close to the end of this particular phase. At any rate, I look forward to sharing more of the latest…just not today.
There are a few phrases that work best in Italian. This is definitely one of them: basta così!
Basically, I’m done; it’s enough.
In other words, I’m ready to call it a day and hit the sack. 😴
Long day. Long rehearsal. Now it’s late. Buona notte! 🌛✨🌜
Translated from Italian: Sweet dreams (literally, dreams of gold) and Good night! 🌝
One of the first things one has to get used to in Switzerland is constantly sorting through multiple languages in order to do almost anything.
I already had a fair amount of Italian when Ramesha and I first got together, but it was amazing how much high school French came back to me — and how much German I learned — while grocery shopping or figuring out the bus schedule!
There are four national languages in Switzerland (German, French, Italian, and Romansh), with most every product description appearing in the three “official” languages of German, French, and Italian. A few products will also have information in English, but not that many.
Less than 0.5% of the population of Switzerland speaks Romansh, which I recently learned is a legacy of the Roman conquest of Rhaetia (now the Swiss canton of Graubünden) in 15 B.C. Fascinating stuff!
Today was about prepping and packing; tomorrow we fly to Switzerland to visit Ramesha’s family. We’ll also spend time with Ramesha’s (pre-Ananda) best friends, who’ve continued to be very close to us over the years.
I can’t really wrap my mind around anything else right now, especially since I really want to get to bed at a reasonable hour.
Buona notte!