It’s been a pretty quiet week here for us: very calm and “molto tranquilo”. We hope your week has been the same. (Nope the photo has nothing to do with anything in the story; I took it during the Carnevale parade here in Florence and just wanted to share it with you.)
The weather has been on and off rain and sun and so we have just been cruising our neighborhood. Naturally Susan has been baking at home and we have been enjoying a variety of tasty items made with her homemade puff pastry – this afternoon for example she made little squares with brie and dried cherries on top and baked them as a sort of mid-afternoon snack. Tomorrow morning I’m counting on fresh-baked apple turnovers. . .
Aside from just enjoying being here we have really little new to report this week.
The “big” news – and it shows you how “small” our lives have gotten in the last few months – the big news is our last two boxes of “stuff arrived this past Tuesday, the very same day my camera was returned from the Nikon service center in Turin.
I suppose now that the games were over they could all get back to work there. But really I can’t say enough about Nikon or about their reps here in Italy. Shortly after we returned to Italy I discovered the camera’s focus was all haywire. After spending several frustrating days trying to find a repair shop in Florence I dropped the camera off at a local shop and it disappeared up north to the only Nikon repair center in Italy (presumably)– oh of course I did get a text message on my phone letting me know it arrived but other than that I had no idea what had happened to it. Anyway come to find out they had to replace the fleebus in the exposure dingis and they did all that for free – they didn’t even charge me shipping! Nikon rules!
But the boxes came as a surprise – we shipped three boxes via the US and Italian postal services on January 4 and one was waiting for us here when we moved to Florence the end of January. But where were the other two? No one had any idea. Everyone kept saying, “Don’t worry, they’ll show up someday”. And sure enough this past Tuesday they showed up – of course they had been opened, rifled through and resealed by the customs folks but everything was there. Whew. Now we can get on with our lives.
Now for an update on our "Mazzone love story". This concerns the statue of Maria and Mario Mazzone in the Delle Porte Sante cemetery and our Valentine’s Day “love” story. As you may recall right around Valentine’s Day we were strolling through the cemetery on a beautiful afternoon and came across this fascinating life-size statue of a young couple, Mario and Maria Mazzone. Mario is smiling broadly and looking directly at Maria; she on the other hand is looking off to the side and a bit downward but also with a hint of a smile on her face, and both are just about to touch hands. From the inscriptions we knew that Mario died in July of 1944 in Germany (presumably killed during an American bombing raid on that city although why he was there remains a mystery) and Maria passed away the following year. Other than that we had no idea what happened in the story.
Naturally we assumed that they were young lovers and probably just married before he was killed (Maria had been born in 1922 and Mario in 1919). Well after a bit of research I just learned today (Saturday) that Maria and Mario were in fact brother and sister! According to the guide to the cemeteries in Florence their mother arrange din 1947 for statue dedicated to these “due fratelli” or two siblings to be placed over their graves. Quite a story there I’d say.
Take care of yourselves and as always,
Wish you were here.
Steve
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