A very late night.

Day 16.

I heaved myself out of bed this morning knowing that after 4 more hours work I could relax for a couple of days. This morning I was cleaning reeds with sandpaper and a chemical of some sort. Three men came in later to pick up a selection of Paolo Soprani "organetti" (diatonic accordions) that were in for repair. I heard Claudio explaining my story to them in Italian and later on one of them came over to talk to me. It turned out he was an American living it Italy, and good friend of Claudio. We spent a good long while talking all things accordion in English, before he gave me his card and they went on their way. I played a couple of pieces for them, too, but my memory failed me!
Soon it was lunch, for which I had pasta with a tomato sauce followed by my daily amble to Gelateria Chaira. When I got back Simone, Erica and I drove to the supermarket in Broni to buy ingredients for fish pie - I'm going to teach them to cook 'English' food when my parent come over next week. Trips to the bookshop and pharmacy followed, too, before Erica and I walked to a bakery to buy a Colomba (an Italian Easter cake, whose name translates as dove). The colourful array of treats in the bakery was fantastic. They sold fresh anolini as well, so I might have to make use of that! We returned home and I practised the accordion for an hour or so.
At 8pm Kleidi, Erica and I headed down to Alternative Cafe in Stradella for aperitivi with Simone and a couple of his friends, before going to Cafe Commercio in Broni. at 10 o'clock we all drove to BEFeD, a brew pub in Pavia for dinner with 9 other people. Our table was booked for half 10 and I was flagging before we even got there! The speciality at the restaurant was chicken - almost a whole spiced chicken served with chips and toast. I wasn't massively hungry but thought I should probably try the famous dish. And so, this giant plate duly arrived. It was very good and I actually got through most of it. The later it got the more the lights were dimmed, and the louder the music became until the place was full of Italians (thankfully none from our party!) dancing embarrassingly to old Italian and English disco songs. As Tom Lehrer once said, "The place was just soggy with nostalgia." Needless to say my ears were ringing when we got out and I was very glad of my bed at 1:30am!

Ciao x