First words: straniere

In 1998, the year I came to Italy the world was a different place. All European countries had a different currency and all Italians were millionaires .Their currency was the lire.  My first pay check was over a million. It sounded great. In those days the internet was still more talked about than a household reality. Romano Prodi was Prime Minister (his first stab at the position) and Scalfaro was President of the Repubblic.

I arrived in Rome on a hot July day. I was going to take part in a teacher training course, and had got a room in a flat through the course organisers. I already had some teaching experience but knew that getting something called a 'CELTA' would help me find future work more easily. 

The flat was in an area called Ponte Lungo, on the outer edge of the concrete jungle that extends along the Via Tuscolana towards Cinecitta. I got to the flat, sweat-soaked from having dragged my suitcase the wrong way around the block of flats. Had I done a left rather than a right turn on exiting the station I'd only have had a 50 metres walk. 

During the hasty interview with the landlady's daughter, Sabrina, new-born son balanced on her hip, it became clear that mosquitoes were a problem. My newly-acquired flatmate and I were punctuating our sentences by slaps on various parts of the body and waving hand gestures as we tried to get the nasty creatures to shift.

We didn't know it yet, but we were up against the tiger mosquitoes. We had to do something about them. As soon as Sabrina left, having pocketed the rent, "cash only please", we decided to go and get some mosquito repellent.

 Little did we know that going shopping at three thirty on a Saturday afternoon was ill-advised. We had both come from countries where day-long opening hours were the norm and the lunch break had been phased out years ago. It never occurred to us that shops would be closed.

We stepped out of the building into the blinding heat of the afternoon.There wasn't much traffic and we were the only people out on the streets. All windows were shuttered, it looked as if the whole city was away on holiday.

There was a small piazza to our right with, barely visible under a portico, some shop awnings. We crossed the dusty, deserted piazza and realised all the shops were closed. I noted a gelateria/pasticceria (ice-cream and pastry shop) for future investigation

The larger road that led off the piazza looked the most promising for what we needed. We found a small supermarket its windows were plastered in promotional posters and flyers advertising the offers of the week.

 The cool air inside was soothing after the heat outside. We searched for a product that would nuke those vicious mosquitoes. It was also an opportunity for a quick shop as neither of us had brought any food other than leftover snacks from our respective flights into Rome, hers from London and mine from Brussels. It was an opportunity to test a few words of Italian on the locals.

My new flatmate, Sally, a large Australian, had had the foresight of doing a short Italian language course before coming out to Rome. I had vague school memories of it.

As we traipsed the narrow aisles and rounded stacks of cans or boxes I became aware that we were attracting attention. Or rather Sally was, tall and busty, she stood a head above the others in the shop who I noted were all elderly women.They stared at us, there was nothing subtle about it. I heard a sound, an sss. Sibilant. Were they hissing at us? Why?
They weren't.

"Let's get out of here," Sally was feeling uncomfortable.  

The old women in their large apron-like light-coton dresses were nodding at each other. These new-comers in their supermarket were 'sss...', and they said a word. Sally identified it for me. It was straniere. We were foreigners. We had been labelled. 

It was a word I would get to know well over the years - an umbrella excuse that was thrown at me whenever I failed to understand a transaction: "Ah si! Ma lei è straniera." (Ah yes! But you're a foreigner.)