Luigi

DISCLAIMER: This blog post contains a story that might be uncomfortable for some of my readers, especially if you tend to worry about me.

The Luigi saga began the first day that Grace and I arrived in Bologna, on August 20, and it continued until the 29^th, when Eli came back to his apartment. It was too weird to write about while it was happening. However, now that I am happily out of the area, I can look back on the entire experience and laugh.

When I corresponded with Eli prior to arriving, he told me that he unfortunately would be out of town during our stay. He entrusted his friend Luigi to give us the keys, show us how to work everything, and answer any questions. Grace and I took a taxi from the airport, and when we arrived at Eli’s, there was Luigi. He did give us the keys, but he didn’t explain all of the nuances of Eli’s apartment very well. Then, Luigi told us that he needed to clean up a few things around the house. He disappeared into Eli’s room. Grace and I went out for dinner and went to bed at 9 pm. We were woken up after midnight by the sound of someone entering the bathroom. Well, of course it was Luigi. It was a bit strange that he was still in the apartment. Grace and I were a bit disconcerted, but we distracted ourselves by watching a movie.

The next day, I emptied out my lunch bag that my mom had packed for my plane trip. In it were some chocolate chip cookies that my dad had made. I put the cookies on a plate. Some were broken in half because of travelling, so it was difficult to know how exactly how many pieces were on the plate. Grace and I went out, and when we came back around 3pm, Luigi popped his head out of Eli’s room to answer some questions we had (how does the shower work, etc). It was again strange that he was there, but since he apparently had some things to do, it seemed semi-reasonable. We went to the grocery store, and Grace bought some cookies. When we returned, my cookie platter seemed to be missing some pieces. Maybe I had fewer cookies than I remembered.

The following night, Grace opened up her own cookies. She folded the bag a certain way to prevent them from becoming stale. When we went to bed, we kept the door to the kitchen cracked open. Soon after turning the light off, I had to get up to go into the bathroom. Well, when I was in there, Grace saw that the light in kitchen was on. She heard someone (guess who?) munching on her cookies! When I unlocked the bathroom door, the light to the kitchen went off. Grace told me about what had happened, and I mentioned that our baguette seemed like less than what we had eaten with dinner. She had noticed it too. We silently giggled, partly out of extreme discomfort and partly because of the absurdity of our situation. Luigi hadn’t bothered us at all, but we kept our door locked. It wasn’t a problem for us to share the apartment with him, but it seemed like he was not supposed to be there (Especially since he was sneaking around after midnight to eat our cookies!).

I wrote an email to Eli, but he was travelling in Turkey with limited internet access. His parents were supposed to return around this time. They came one night to say hello (it may have been the same night as the cookie incident). Since we hadn’t heard from Eli, Grace and I went upstairs one afternoon to talk to his parents. Keep in mind that it was about 104 degrees, which is a very uncomfortable temperature for most people. You probably cannot guess what happened next. We knocked on the door, and Eli’s father answered. He stood there in his underwear, and we could hear a lovely classical tune playing in the background. We told him we had a problem, so he invited us inside. I explained the entire situation to Eli’s father while he was almost naked. It was such a bizarre experience that only adds more humor to the story.

Eli’s father told us to tell Luigi that he wanted to speak with him. Well, this wasn’t too comforting, because we had no idea when we would see him again. I eventually heard from Eli, who apologized profusely and said that he was very embarrassed. Luigi was only supposed to give us the keys.

When Eli came home, Grace and I realized just how different our first week in Bologna would have been. He was a wonderful host, and he deserves his own blog entry. I’ll probably write one later this week. In the end, no one was hurt or disturbed. At the time, it was unnerving, and it made our introduction to Bologna even more stressful (Don’t forget, we were searching for apartments at this point, too). With the passage of time, however, it has become a great story.