Ciao Ragazze

Apparently Perugia is under threat.
From what you may ask, as we did.
Well, according to Antonella, our Italian grammar teacher, too many foreign girls are getting engaged to Italian boys.
This is why there are so many local girls who don’t have boyfriends, she continues seriously.
But why can’t the Italian girls take up with the foreign boys, surely that would be a solution? we think.
Oh no, it’s too hard for the girls, Antonella says.
The “stranieri” culture is too different. They only want to be with Italian boys, with Perugini boys actually, she says.

Italians have made being a closed society into a social phenomenon.
Here, it’s always your family first, your contrada (or neighborhood) second, your town third, you region fourth and Italy fifth.
It’s an attitude that can rear its head in some unexpected and sometimes ugly ways.
The often violent pushing and shoving to get on a bus or train first; the shameless queue jumping or the refusal to yield to anyone when walking down the street (ie, if there’s a group of five Italians they will walk five abreast and force all other comers onto the road and often into the path of oncoming traffic!)

Having said that, Perugia is actually a relatively open city.
With more than 10,000 students (both Italian and foreign) here at any one time, it’s in the best interests of the shop keepers, café owners and bartenders to serve us.
But they don’t all have to be welcoming.
Take the morning cappuccino.
We started going to “our” bar, at the foot of our street and on the way to Stranieri about a month ago.
For the first week-and-a-half we got greeted with a gruff “Dica Singorina” literally “Tell me Miss” (as in tell me what you want).
Then one day, quite miraculously, after a week-and-a-half of fronting up every day and asking for the same thing, our barista greeted us with “Ciao Ragazze” literally (Ciao girls) and prepared our usual (due cappuccini) with no order necessary.
She’s even started smiling at us now.
Who knows, maybe this time next month we would have graduated to “Come stai?”