One Ciao Is Never Enough

How to say goodbye in Italian

This ad pops up on my cell phone–for a moisturizer called Bava di Lumaca Miracolosa. Miraculous snail drool. Really? I have a hard time picturing a fashionable Italian lady striding up to the cosmetic counter and stocking up on drool. But who knows? Maybe drool is a thing over here. Your skin looks divine. Thanks! It’s this new drool I just started using.

Snails are very much in evidence this time of year. You see them snailing along the sidewalks, you see them stuck to walls and fence posts. You see them on the menu, snails coming by land and by sea. We eat sea snails whenever we find them. I did not know they drooled. It could be that their bava contributes to the sauce, as well as moisturizing a lady’s skin.

Now, about the ciao. Lately I’ve become aware of the multiple ciao at the end of an Italian phone conversation. Tizi’s friend Adele calls. We talk a few minutes, make arrangements to get together, and she closes the call saying Ciao. Ciao ciao ciao. Ciao ciao. Ciao.

Over and out. And then some.

She’s not the only one. A cousin’s wife, she’s a bunch of ciao, too. Or you’re sitting in a coffee bar. At the next table, a call comes to an end. Ciao ciao. Ciao. Ciao. Ciao ciao ciao.

Imagine, in American English, you’ve said your piece on a telephone call, the business is done. The caller closes:

G’bye. G’bye g’bye g’bye. G’bye g’bye. G’bye

This many-ciao thing is weird. And I love it.

Adele called us yesterday inviting us to an unveiling. It will be the second unveiling this week.

A new fresco has been discovered in the Santa Croce convent over in Verucchio. Verucchio is a twenty-minute drive from our apartment, a hill town with a fortress and a church dating back to the 14th or 15th century. There will be a guided tour of the convent with an art historian. We’ll be among the first to see this fresco, which of course is hundreds of years old.

When we said yes, we'd love to come, Adele got off our call immediately, after her 6-8 ciaos, because she needed to call to make sure tickets were still available. It’s hard to imagine that much demand, that many fresco fans out there, but this is Italy. And it must be some fresco. We’re going Tuesday night. It’s likely I will miss most of what is said–I speak lunch Italian, not art history Italian–but I love events like this because the speakers are always really smart and dying to have an audience and opportunity to tell you everything they know.

The fresco is the second unveiling. The first unveiling was the bomb. An actual bomb.

It’s the main topic of conversation in the bars up in our town. A World War II era bomb was discovered this week in Serravalle, from the time the Allies drove German forces north. It could be an American bomb, it could be a British bomb. There it is, somewhere on the edge of town.

“That explains the thing I heard this morning,” I say. We’re sitting with Fausto and Bruna, old friends of the family, in our coffee bar (we also have a pastry bar, down around the corner). I ask, “What do you call a car with speakers mounted on top?” And inside the car, a man–always a man–with a microphone.

“Auto parlante,” Fausto says. A talking car.

Usually it’s politics. This morning the car drove by our building, on the road down behind us. I heard the metallic male voice. So it was the bomb he was talking about, not politics.

They’re taking the bomb away today. There’s lot of nervous chatter about it, lots of nervous laughter, but it’s not funny. Lots of police presence, restricting traffic and guarding against entrance to the potential blast zone. We’ll be gone. If there’s a safe way to drive out of town, we’ll be elsewhere.

We’re going to Fano today, to lay in chocolate supplies we’ll take back to the States with us in a few weeks. We’ll have lunch. Maybe start with a dish of sea snails. When we call Adele, she says, Yes, she would love to join us. Ciao. Ciao ciao. Ciao ciao ciao. See you there.