Welcome to your intro-to-Italian class, where in a few paragraphs I will tell you the worst word in the entire language.
A lot of you probably don't know many words in Italian, and the ones you do are the super-simple ones like ciao, arrividerci, grazie, prego, or similar things. You might've even heard words like "capisce" in Italian movies (pronounced cah-peesh-ay, not cah-peesh, for the record), or "mamma mia" instead of "oh my god" or something like that.
Well, all of those get used, and I'm going to tell you a little more. "Prego" means everything. It can mean any of the following things: you're welcome, can I help you? Sorry, please, go ahead, can you repeat that? and more.
Mamma mia sounds like a joke the first time you hear it, but it's real.
And of course, there are the hand-motions. These things are real, and they're used to a funny degree. When Italians almost get into car accidents (which is literally every 100 meters on every street at all times of every day), they start doing Italian hand-gestures. You know the ones - pinching their thumb to their first two fingers and shaking the hand up and down, or maybe lifting their hand as if they're going to backhand slap someone (someone who might not exist) and things like that.
But here it is, the worst word in the entire language of Italian...sciopero.
This, of course, is the Italian word for "strike," and it only applies to transportation personnel, it seems. Sometimes this means that the Milano metropolitan lines will shut down on Fridays (usually during summer months - gotta screw over the population and get your three-day weekends sorted), and other times it means the statewide rail system will shut down with very short notice.
For instance, this past weekend we went to a town called Bardonecchia, which is a ski-resort town near the Franco-Italian border. We purchased train tickets through the state railway website on Friday evening, with scheduled trains for Saturday morning (to Bardonecchia, with a stop in Torino) and Sunday evening (with a stop in Torino on the way back).
We overheard the word "sciopero" while on a local bus in the town on Sunday afternoon, two hours before our train was set to leave. Scared, we made a beeline for the station to discover that, yep, all trains were cancelled for the rest of the day. We'd probably have to book a hotel for another night, then purchase a new train ticket for Monday morning - because they're not likely to honor your previous ticket in event of a strike.
There's more though: This was reportedly a planned sciopero that the state railway knew would happen as of earlier in the week. No warning on their website, no pop-up when trying to purchase tickets on the website, no information at all, which is perfect because it was relevant to thousands of people who would be traveling.
As dumb luck had it, we were overheard by a young man who spoke English and told us that a bus would be going to Torino in about 10-15 minutes and we could get on it if we liked. We were two of the last three people to get seats on the bus, which did make it to Torino without incident, where we waited to see if our train would actually arrive and go to Milan.
Again, as dumb luck had it, we were able to get back to our planned destination, only about 20 euros in the hole.
Others were not so lucky. The bus ran out of seats, so not everyone could get back to Torino, and that's only speaking of people who happened to be in the train station at that exact moment.
You might be thinking "well that's not so bad, at least they gave you the option of a bus." But you're wrong, because this was a private bus who was making the trip anyway and found out that there was a chance to fill every open seat on the bus - a wise, opportunistic move, of course.
So there you go, that's the worst word I can imagine in Italian because it seems to just add tremendous stress and difficulty to our lives anytime it comes up. And yet, for Italians, it's just kind of a way of life. Our bosses have told us that if there's a sciopero on the local trains, some teachers just don't go to work and treat it like a day off (which speaks to the ingrained national work ethic, of course) instead of, you know, figuring out a solution or alternative. And this is generally accepted practice.
I can't wait to tell you guys all about the crash-and-burn of the world Expo, coming to Milan on May 1, which we were just informed is the 2nd least-productive day of the year as it's the national Labor Day in Italy and virtually no one goes to work. Good time to start a worldwide exposition. We were also informed that there are 100+ pavilions/buildings being made for this expo, which opens in 6 weeks, and only five are done: USA, Norway, UK, Germany, Switzerland. Southern European ones have a loooong way to go.
This is gonna be fun.
A lot of you probably don't know many words in Italian, and the ones you do are the super-simple ones like ciao, arrividerci, grazie, prego, or similar things. You might've even heard words like "capisce" in Italian movies (pronounced cah-peesh-ay, not cah-peesh, for the record), or "mamma mia" instead of "oh my god" or something like that.
Well, all of those get used, and I'm going to tell you a little more. "Prego" means everything. It can mean any of the following things: you're welcome, can I help you? Sorry, please, go ahead, can you repeat that? and more.
Mamma mia sounds like a joke the first time you hear it, but it's real.
And of course, there are the hand-motions. These things are real, and they're used to a funny degree. When Italians almost get into car accidents (which is literally every 100 meters on every street at all times of every day), they start doing Italian hand-gestures. You know the ones - pinching their thumb to their first two fingers and shaking the hand up and down, or maybe lifting their hand as if they're going to backhand slap someone (someone who might not exist) and things like that.
But here it is, the worst word in the entire language of Italian...sciopero.
This, of course, is the Italian word for "strike," and it only applies to transportation personnel, it seems. Sometimes this means that the Milano metropolitan lines will shut down on Fridays (usually during summer months - gotta screw over the population and get your three-day weekends sorted), and other times it means the statewide rail system will shut down with very short notice.
For instance, this past weekend we went to a town called Bardonecchia, which is a ski-resort town near the Franco-Italian border. We purchased train tickets through the state railway website on Friday evening, with scheduled trains for Saturday morning (to Bardonecchia, with a stop in Torino) and Sunday evening (with a stop in Torino on the way back).
We overheard the word "sciopero" while on a local bus in the town on Sunday afternoon, two hours before our train was set to leave. Scared, we made a beeline for the station to discover that, yep, all trains were cancelled for the rest of the day. We'd probably have to book a hotel for another night, then purchase a new train ticket for Monday morning - because they're not likely to honor your previous ticket in event of a strike.
There's more though: This was reportedly a planned sciopero that the state railway knew would happen as of earlier in the week. No warning on their website, no pop-up when trying to purchase tickets on the website, no information at all, which is perfect because it was relevant to thousands of people who would be traveling.
As dumb luck had it, we were overheard by a young man who spoke English and told us that a bus would be going to Torino in about 10-15 minutes and we could get on it if we liked. We were two of the last three people to get seats on the bus, which did make it to Torino without incident, where we waited to see if our train would actually arrive and go to Milan.
Again, as dumb luck had it, we were able to get back to our planned destination, only about 20 euros in the hole.
Others were not so lucky. The bus ran out of seats, so not everyone could get back to Torino, and that's only speaking of people who happened to be in the train station at that exact moment.
You might be thinking "well that's not so bad, at least they gave you the option of a bus." But you're wrong, because this was a private bus who was making the trip anyway and found out that there was a chance to fill every open seat on the bus - a wise, opportunistic move, of course.
So there you go, that's the worst word I can imagine in Italian because it seems to just add tremendous stress and difficulty to our lives anytime it comes up. And yet, for Italians, it's just kind of a way of life. Our bosses have told us that if there's a sciopero on the local trains, some teachers just don't go to work and treat it like a day off (which speaks to the ingrained national work ethic, of course) instead of, you know, figuring out a solution or alternative. And this is generally accepted practice.
I can't wait to tell you guys all about the crash-and-burn of the world Expo, coming to Milan on May 1, which we were just informed is the 2nd least-productive day of the year as it's the national Labor Day in Italy and virtually no one goes to work. Good time to start a worldwide exposition. We were also informed that there are 100+ pavilions/buildings being made for this expo, which opens in 6 weeks, and only five are done: USA, Norway, UK, Germany, Switzerland. Southern European ones have a loooong way to go.
This is gonna be fun.
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