Nel Sole

In 1967, Al Bano Carrisi met Romina Power, daughter of American actor Tyrone Power, during the filming of the movie "Nel Sole", named after one of his songs and from then on they were one of Italy's most loved famous couples for many many years. (They married in 1970 and split up in 1999).  And here's what Wikipedia says about the couple.

Here you can listen to the song "Nel Sole". They don't make songs like this anymore....

Italian dialects

Here is a video for those of you that takes a particular interest in languages and/or dialects. If you're not interested in dialects at all maybe you like coffee and/or history and then I have another video for you. 

Enrico Brignano (actor and comedian) lets us experience some of the Italian dialects. It doesn't matter if you don't understand Italian because it's the sound of the dialects that matters the most, not the words. And for that matter, sometimes he's speaking gibberish.....

Some of the dialects I haven't heard myself - like some of the northern dialects (Trentino Alto-Adige), but when I hear him speaking I immediately get a picture in my head of those Italians from Tyrol standing on their mountain tops shouting to each other...

My mother-in-law is from Puglia and sounds just like what you hear on the video. Enrico is from Rome so the Lazio dialect he gets a 100 %. This is also more or less how I speak since I live in this region. The dialect from Marche is also spot on. When we moved into the new house we had an electrician from this region helping us and he sounded just like this. And what an embarrassing experience for me! I didn't understand a single word of what he was saying and had to ask him to repeat everything at least four times.... In the end I just nodded and agreed to everything he asked me - which resulted in 2 lamps being put upside-down on the wall....

The two dialects from Sicily and Campania are the "classic" dialects from American Italian gangster films so I guess most people recognize those... But now it's time to listen to what Enrico has to say. Enjoy!

A coffee, please....

I guess the owner of this bar was tired of  his "rude" customers

You can see this sign as you enter a particular Italian bar. For those of you who doesn't speak Italian - this is what it says:


A (cup of) coffee    3 euro
A (cup of) coffee, please    2 euro
Good morning, can you make me a cup of coffee, please    1 euro


This is kind of a funny way to get the customers to be nicer to the barista when ordering their coffee..... I guess most people prefer to ask nicely for a cup of coffee instead of having to pay three times as much as the normal price.

However, I have to say I find it kind of strange, seeing a sign like this here in Italy where you hear "prego", "per favore" and "grazie" everywhere you go. You'll hear it shouted at the markets, it lingers in the corners of the shops and it bounces off the walls in the piazzas. So why would this particular owner feel that he has to educate his customers? It beats me..

I'm not sure how much I would have to pay for my coffee if I ordered it from that bar. Surely not 3 euro, but 1 or 2 euros depending on how much in a hurry I am at the time. If the bar is full or I have to catch a train my coffee would cost me 2 euros. (It might be a Norwegian "thing" - not wanting to waste anyone's time with "unneccessary" words......) But if I'm not in a hurry and the bar is almost empty I would get away with 1 euro.

How much would you have to pay for your coffee? 

Italian "remedy" for a bad cough....

Last winter I had a bout of bronchitis and with it comes the (bad) cough. At some point I ran out of cough medicine and all the pharmacies were closed. And then what do you do...???  The advice I got from my mother-in-law was this. Boil some red wine and add some sugar to your taste. Let it boil for awhile so that the alcohol evaporates. (Add some almonds and raisins and voila - you've made mulled wine....) Your cough will disappear, I promise. And if not, you have a very good excuse for making yourself another glass of "cough suryp".....

In Norway this will be a rather expensive cough medicine (because of  all the taxes on alcoholic beverages), but here in Italy it's actually much cheaper making this instead of buying the "real stuff"....

One thing is sure though.... this tastes much better than what you can buy in the pharmacy! (And come to think of it... I almost wish I had bronchitis now..... ;-))

SALUTE !

Picture is from here

Russian roulette....

On the TV news today...

 

A woman in her 60s has been shot and killed by a mistake by her husband. The story goes like this:

 

The woman finds a gun in a drawer and says to her husband:  Aren't you going to kill yourself soon? (I guess she was getting tired of him... Or maybe they just had a very strange sense of humour... )

 

Her husband takes the gun from her and says while aiming the gun at her and pulling the trigger: No, I think it's better if I kill you instead... Woops... What happened? Is she dead? It was a mistake!  I swear ! I didn't mean to kill her..... 

 

Yeah, right....!