Caverna di Rolland
Most of the Covid year had been spent navigating the complexities of buying a car in Germany while needing to have Italian plates. We also needed a garage.
If you’ve ever driven in Europe …
… especially in Italy and MOST especially in Pescara, you’ll know how rare an available parking space is. Dawn suspects this explains why they drive the way they do. Italians will bend every rule of the road to get ahead of you in order to get to the next parking spot that opens up. Whether they intend to park or not.
Sometimes you get lucky … sometimes ‘lucky’ means you’re parked less than three blocks away from the flat.
Parking is so bad that we often make decisions to drive based around whether the errand is important enough to move our car. If it is an especially plum spot, like being right in front of our building (sotto casa), we need a compelling reason to take the car out. If we can walk we do.
A good indication of how precious a parking place is that as soon as someone gets in their car the others start to circle. They’re like jackals!
We went carless for almost five years; we took the decision seriously. Finally we gave into our need for the freedom of movement a car provides. Many of you may recall we bought Pachino, our city car, one year ago. Look at it.
Motorcycles are the worst offenders. They will park wherever they fit. This often makes it difficult to get out of your parking space
Poor Pachino! He either got scraped when someone was parking or leaving.
We watch them park. Often times a nonna gets out of the car to help guide. We noticed that slight bumps or brushes into surrounding cars is breifly acknowledged with a shoulder shrug.
You wouldn’t believe it! A neighbor had his driver’s side mirror sheared off while parked. A friend suffered a crumpled fender. We live on one of the busiest streets, which is worse in the summer because everyone wants to be at the beach. But that shouldn’t be an excuse.
Take care of your car in the garage, and the car will take care of you on the road.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words
Now you know why Rolland needs a safe spot!
Dawn
We bought a new broom, WD40, some rags, and other things at the OBI in Sambuceto. (An OBI is like a Lowes or Home Depot.) We have to haul everything on foot to the garage. Did we mention the garage is about three blocks away?
Steve
We had a mission: clean up Rolland’s new cave. The garage door was rusty and cranky. Used a whole can of WD40 on it. That’ll work!
Steve
When the door is up, Rolland has a great view of the park road.
Dawn
We had done everything we could possibly do to get ready. When there’s nothing left to do, the best place to wait is on the beach.
Why do we call our new car Rolland?
We had this comic stuck on our refrigerator for years. It made us laugh. When we decided to get our car, this cartoon popped up on a feed. We have been calling our new car Rolland ever since we decided to get it.