Settling in

Today commences week 2 of my four-week stay in Salerno. It was back to Bar Rosa for my morning cappuccino and cornetto. I’ve become a “regular” now as the barista no longer asks if I want “cacao” sprinkled on my cappuccino and the woman behind the pastry counter now greets me with a smile and a “buon giorno”. I still have the same instructor, Anna, and essentially the same group of classmates. We lost one student to another class and one went home to France, but we have an addition of a (or should I say another) woman from Switzerland. After our customary “go around the room and tell us what you did yesterday/this past weekend”, Anna began a lesson on direct and indirect objects – when and how to use them. We took our usual break at 11a.m. and Christina and I crossed the street towards the sea. She treated me to a cappuccino, and we enjoyed our “pausa” while overlooking the shoreline.

She seems to be a regular patron, as her cappuccino was special.

Instead of a heart, there was an amorphous blob on my crema!

After my private lesson (will I ever completely decipher the difference between passato prossimo and imperfetto?), Ulrika and I decided to gave a light lunch, perhaps a salad. Another discovery – at 2:30 pm on Monday most of the restaurants are closed for business. We ended up at one of the few places that was open, on via Roma (a main thoroughfare) that clearly catered to tourists. It had many and varied items on the menu (a bad sign) and a hostess outside the venue beckoning us to enter (another bad sign). It was probably the least impressive thing I have eaten during this stay. It was a simple Caprese salad, but it was filling and I really was not in the mood for pasta or pizza.

There was an optional seminar on what I had interpreted to be on how to order coffee at a bar, but it ended up as a one-hour rambling discussion on various topics. However, at the end of the session, five of us did end up at the bar along the water anyway and, instead of coffee, we enjoyed Aperol spritzes, the trendy aperitivo that sort of looks like an orange soda, and about 90 minutes of conversation, predominantly in Italian!

Tonight, I’m slumming it for dinner – I stopped off at the grocery store and picked up some bread, cheese and prosciutto – dinner is a panino (sandwich). By the way, panini refers to more than one sandwich!