The Shopping Experience

When most people think about shopping in Italy, very pleasant images come to mind.  Strolling amongst the chic boutiques and designer stores in Milan or Rome.  Buying fruits, vegetables and olives at a quaint outdoor market in a small hilltop town overlooking a countryside full of vineyards.  Or perhaps buying a bathing suit to wear while sunbathing on a yacht anchored off Capri or Portofino. And yes, those things can all be part of the Italian experience.  Sometimes.***

However, there is also the reality of shopping while trying to set up a house in rural Puglia. And making sure your dogs have food.  And you have food (the kind of food you can prepare quickly between opening boxes and entertaining contractors.) And then your fish has to have a new tank.  And your clothes have to have somewhere to call home in a property with no closets.  (Really, NOT ONE SINGLE CLOSET!) And you have to have a phone.  And a toaster.  And a kettle.  And a TV (I fully admit I’d be lost without TV.) And….

The last week has been a whirlwind of trying to cobble together the staples to keep things running. Here are a few little highlights/pieces of advice for practical shopping in Fasano (and I assume lots of other towns in Italy) based on my experiences so far…

1.       DON’T shop at the Conforama/CONAD Centro Commerciale on a weekend.  Especially not on a rainy weekend. I have never seen so many people crammed into a store in my life (except for maybe Black Friday in the US).  All ages, shapes and sizes.  Gathered in groups.  Families. Singles.  Kids. Oh my!! Trying to order armoires (“armadi” in Italian) was comical.  And then trying to communicate that yes, I want them delivered.  Yes, I want them assembled. And yes, it will be OK if they call me to confirm the delivery time.  All in Italian. Not so easy.  But miraculously…..despite the fact that two days later on the scheduled delivery day they could not find the house and we had to meet the guys at a bar and lead them home….I got the armoires.  They were the right ones.  They fit in the spaces as I had planned.  And most of my clothes have a home. I stress the word most, because I own a stupid amount of clothing for someone who lives 50% of her life in yoga pants/jeans and sweatshirts/T-shirts and I have a stupid number of pairs of shoes.  And I’m not even a shoe person.  I have bad feet. WHAT was I thinking when I brought all of this stuff with me??

One half of the shoes I packed.  As the movers said "Madonna Mia".

 

2.       DON’T buy something here thinking that it doesn’t matter if it isn't exactly right….that it’ll be easy to return/exchange it.  That’s what we did. With a duvet.  A duvet that turned out to be the wrong size for one of the Italian beds in Craig’s house.  A duvet that required us to schlep down the hill the next day, in the pouring rain, to the store to make an exchange. We enter the store. We approach the cashier.  In broken Italian we communicate that the size was wrong and we would like to exchange it for another one.  We were told that we could go pick out a new item and pay for it. But then we would have to take the original downstairs into the basement (outside, to the left and down a ramp…all said very rapidly in Italian) to handle the return. We follow the instructions. We get downstairs and find the “Assistenza Clienti” office.  (At this point Craig abandons me to run back and get some food.) The woman there listens to my concerns.  “Troppo grande” I tell her.  She nods and fills out a form, which I have to sign.  And then escorts me over to another window and hands me off to one of her colleagues. He proceeds to put all of my information into a computer.  Then he prints out four (FOUR!) more forms that I have to sign.  And then he prints out a “Buono Spesa” which I also have to sign.  I have no idea what that is.  But I smile, take it and thank him. And I go to get a Diet Coke from the vending machine. (It turns out “buono spesa” is store credit, which I have since used as the Conforama is my new favorite store and home away from home.)  Happy ending. I think.

3.       DO find a bilingual friend in Italy who can help you navigate some of your more complicated purchases.  We did this in the form of Roberta, the young woman who found us this property in the first place.  Poor Roberta.  She spent an entire day with the Klebers. She endured our dogs and our fireworks sparked by stress and fatigue. But by the end of the day both Craig and I had shiny new Italian mobile phones with both domestic and international calling plans (at a fraction of what we were paying in the US), Fred had a new tank and food, and we had a game plan to get me in touch with a rheumatologist before I run out of my lupus medicine. Thank you Roberta! (I’m cautiously optimistic about life starting to fall into place.)

4.       DO understand that they are not kidding when they tell you that shops close in the afternoon.  From 2ish to 5ish, nothing is open.  No business is conducted outside of tourist areas. And you might as well just relax and live with it. 

***Please note that I do plan, at some point in the near future, to go to a quaint little market, stroll amongst the chic boutiques, and maybe even swim off a yacht.  But right now I will take the greatest pleasure from putting away the last glass in my new kitchen cupboards, the last pair of shoes in my new armoires and the last bottle of vitamins in my new bathroom cabinets.  And then I will turn on Modern Family with Italian subtitles on my new TV with my new SkyTV service and practice the language of my new home. And maybe I’ll just start calling people so they can see my shiny new Italian phone number! J