Torno Subito
Life in Italy requires a certain flexibility with regard to understanding time, which here is more of a suggestion than a rule. Store opens at 10 am? Better to show up at 10:30 just in case, especially if it’s a small business with a single proprietor. Learning what aspects of life Italians consider to be just suggestions as opposed to rules and behaving accordingly is the expat’s Darwinism. For example, the rules of the road. One-way street? Lane markings? Signs forbidding you to pass on a dangerous curve? Just suggestions! So if you’re a person who values rules and efficiency, it’s easier to suspend your outrage and adapt to the Italian construct of time, instead of stalking through the streets muttering to yourself about how is it even possible that Italy is in the G-7. Sort of like riding a motorcycle. You have to become one with the motorcycle and lean with it, because if you sit rigidly upright while it’s taking a turn, you’ll probably fall off and be flattened under its wheels. Also, the motorcycle might go the wrong way down a one-way street, so be prepared for that as well.
I’ve learned — sometimes the hard way — to accept and even appreciate the patterns of life here, but there are two words that when posted on a storefront can strike fear into the heart of even the most adaptive tourist or expat: torno subito.
Torno subito means “I’ll be right back.” It’s a poetic description of a proximate future, a half rhyme giving you, fittingly, only half the information. Someone was there and will potentially return, but who? And when? You know when you get to a ticket window, or hardware store or whatever, and they have one of those signs up saying “Back in 15 minutes,” and you then spend the next few minutes wondering is it 15 minutes from now? Or 15 minutes from when the person hung the sign? Or are we seven minutes in with another eight to go? WHICH IS IT? That’s the same confusion that seeing a “torno subito” sign inspires, except that it’s even more vague. When is “subito”? When did they leave? What is time to them? A construct? A suggestion? Are they on their riposo, in which case it’s better to just gnash your teeth and give up now?
We spent four days in the Emilia-Romagna region between Christmas and New Year’s. Emilia-Romagna is generally quite flat — it’s on the northeastern side of Italy, just over the Apennine mountain range from Tuscany — and bicycling is a very common mode of transport in the cities we visited, Bologna, Modena, and Ferrara. It’s very picturesque: cobblestone streets, medieval architecture, people cycling through quiet streets with their groceries in baskets…my urban dream. I bought a bike in 2012 after my first solo trip to Paris, and I miss it. It’s a heavy Dutch-style Raleigh, with a basket on the back, and right now it’s living in a storage unit in DC.
Italians cycling through the Piazza della Cattedrale in Ferrara
Sigh. Anyway. I was entranced with all the cycling we saw and desperately wanted to rent bikes while we were in Ferrara. The guy at a bicycle store gave us the information for a rental service and we (optimistically, naively) set off without calling ahead, which you would think that three months in Naples would have taught me to do by now, due to aforementioned “time is a suggestion” principle, but no.
After walking past the address, puzzled since there appeared to be no storefronts other than an entryway to a municipal office, we doubled back and realized that one of the sets of closed heavy wooden doors was the bike rental shop — identifiable only with a tiny sticker — and a handwritten sign that said the following:
TORNO SUBITO ALLE 14:30
With a phone number underneath.
Really this story should just end here, because the smart thing would have been to accept the inevitable, which was that “torno subito” meant nothing, no one was coming, and we should just go to the closest cafe. But because hope springs eternal, and I was starry-eyed with the idea of cycling, J humored me and we stayed. Also, by Italian standards, this was a wealth of information! First of all, someone had clearly written the sign, so that was proof of life! Second, there was an actual hour of the day given for their eventual return. And third, there was even a number to call if no one showed up! (Side note, at no point did it occur to me that the sign may have been posted the day earlier, which I suppose now is possible.)
We waited ten minutes in the steadily freezing cold until 2:30, peering around the corner hoping to see the bike shop attendant zipping up on his or her inevitable bicycle. At 2:35 I wondered if it was too soon to call the number on the sign. By 2:49 I had memorized my little script in Italian to say that we were waiting. At 2:51 I was grinding my teeth while the phone rang and rang for the second time. By 2:55 I was ready to give up, which of course is when the proprietor called me back (!!) to say that his colleague was on his way and would be there momentarily. “How momentarily?” I asked suspiciously. Just another 20 minutes! By that point the cold and the false promises of torno subito had squashed even my ardent love of city cycling down to a feeble pulp, and we gave up and went to thaw over hot drinks.
Italy: It just doesn’t always go the way you plan, but really, what better way to experience authentic life here than to believe, be disappointed, console with a cioccolata calda, and accept the imperfect?