No 2 Without 3...

Another catch-up posting from Saturday 21 June:

OK the first weekend after we moved in, we decided that we needed to find some decent furniture options for our new home. Marlene told us that the IKEA store was in Padova about 50 KM away. Although I had only been driving the Punty little Punto for a couple of days in the wild, wild West of Italian motorways, we figured we were up to challenge of getting on the Autostrada. Have GPS, Will Travel! We were really excited about our trip, so we got ready first thing in the morning and stepped out of the house. On our front stoop, Cynthia turned to me and asked if I had my house key. I had to sheepishly admit that I didn't. "Ha Ha!" she said triumphantly as she brandished her key ring. The ever ready redhead wasn't going to get caught out in the cold anymore. She inserted her key to let me back in, but it wouldn't turn...

You see, my dear friends, there is another important lesson to be learned about the front door locks in Italian homes. Although we already knew that they locked automatically as soon as they're closed, what we didn't know is that your key won't work if there is a key already in it. You see there is a key hole on both sides of the door: inside and out. Kind of like those high security deadbolts in the States. And if you happen to leave the key inserted in the key hole on
the inside, which I had, it is not going to matter if you have the key on the outside, which we did, because the lock is never going to turn, which it didn't.

The worst part was that we had locked that house up tighter than a drum. After Cynthia had witnessed first hand not one, but TWO, people easily climb up the balcony and "Thief her house", she wasn't taking any chances. We locked every balcony door and window in the joint and
lowered every shutter. I took the heat for this one because I left the key in the door, so I had to approach Caterina with our problem. I hung my head in shame and tried to explain the situation to her as best I could. I injected a lot of "mi scusi" (Excuse me) and "mi dispiace" (I'm sorry) into the conversation. After a minute assessing the windows and agreeing that route was not going to be fruitful, she went back to her half of the duplex to see if she had a spare key to our taverna, which I knew for a fact did not have a key on the inside of the keyhole. And as luck would have it, she did! As she unlocked the basement door and we all paraded into the cool humidity of our downstairs, we all breathed a long sigh of relief and got a little chuckle. In her broken English, our landlady explained to us that if we weren't able to get in this way, then the only other option would be to break in to house by removing the glass panel adjacent to the front door. It is a very
difficult and dangerous process. She knew this first hand because they had to do it for the last American tennants who locked themselves out the same way we did. I immediately recalled seeing some nasty looking cracks in the long glass panel next to our front door and could only imagine what it must have taken to get in through that route. Pay attention future writers of America, this is a technique called "foreshadowing".

Well after a few more minutes of choppy English phrases mingled in with some seriously ungrammatical Italian, we thanked Caterina for the 87th time and sent her back to her house to continue her morning's activities. We in turn headed up our basement steps to remove that infernal key from the front door. It was at the top of the basement steps that we ran into "unaltra problema", another problem. As I have explained previously, every single door (except the bathroom door) has a key and lock on it, including this door at the top of our basement steps. And Cynthia being the security minded person that she is, had locked and left the key in this door last night before retiring for bed. We were back at square one, and I had to walk back around to Caterina's house to explain our new situation. I was less ashamed this time, because Cynthia had locked this door not me.

Yep, you guessed it, kiddies. There was no way in except through that pane of glass next to the door. Caterina had to go and pick up her son, Stefano, who had been away at camp or something, so we patiently sat on our front steps and reflected on how we managed to botch this thing up royally. After about 10 minutes Caterina and Stefano returned, and Stefano (17) and Michele (16), went to work on removing the glass from the front door. I hovered near by trying to help as best I could; handing them tools or holding the screws they removed. Cynthia sat with Caterina and her daugher, Sofia (7), and watched us work. By this point it was almost noon, and the full heat and humidity of the Italian summer made our labor that much more arduous. After a half hour of persistent effort, we were able to remove the wood frame, but the double paned glass was wedged and glued in pretty tight. However by bending the pane near the bottom Caterina was able to slide her thin arm in and remove the key from the door. The entire time I thought that glass, which already had some cracks in it, would break through and slice her arm open, but thankfully it didn't. We spent the next half hour putting the frame back on the window. After 87 more thank you's for Stefano, Michele, Caterina, and even Sofia, who waited so patiently, we were finally on our way to IKEA.

The trip down there had it's few little ups and downs, but compared to our morning, it seems almost anticlimactic. Stay tuned for more of Mike and Cyn's Italian Adventures!!