[00:00:02] Speaker A: Buon giorno. Welcome to a couple of Europhiles where we like to explore cultural realities. Today, it's all about Italy. And if you like Italy, you'll love the Piemontese. I've got a book coming out with a dozen fantastic interviews with this northern tribe of Italians we call the Piemontese. But first, Francis is here to discuss some current topics, like digital nomad visas, Maloney's recent visit to China, and the current chaos, and how Italy found its own solution regarding the energy issues in Europe, specifically importing the volume of gas through the transmed pipeline. So, Francis, let us begin with Italy's entrepreneurial spirit.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: Okay. Bailey. Italy is to understand how these things happen and how cultural realities affect Italy, you need to understand something about the italian character and how they work.
First of all, the economy of Italy is largely based on micro enterprises.
We have a lot of little tiny family run enterprises with, like three or four family members all acting together. And it's very entrepreneurial. And people are very used to dancing on the edge of the cliff and almost going bankrupt and dealing with chaos every single day. So they really handle it as well as it can be handled, because that's their normal state of affairs. Italy is also very export oriented. It manufactures things and exports them. It's the second largest exporter after Germany. And now Germany's economy is in a tank. But normally Italy is number two in terms of actual stuff that gets exported.
And it has a lot of experience with technocrats. The italian government has more than once basically handed power to people that were not elected, like Mario Draghi or Monti or several other examples, because they basically say when they have real problems, they find an expert and they draft him in to fix it. And this is a thing that people don't understand very often, but it's a thing Italy is very good at, is to basically figure out what to do and just get out of trouble, which is what they do quite well.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: In fact, we saw this firsthand when we were living in Piemonte for seven years. Part of the reason I wrote a book about it. We watched a gentleman named Massey, who owned a local bar and restaurant. He just, he exhibited this spirit. He dipped into his savings during COVID and simply turned everything around. He was extraordinarily resilient. And he had the most positive kind of attitude as we basically watched him turn on a dime as the Italians do so well, especially in the middle of chaos, they managed to find a solution. It's part of the reason their story is so unique. But Francis Italy always manages to stay under the radar, don't they? It's like when discussing the EU, the news often focuses on France and Germany. And all we've heard about since the war began was the energy issue and how it's altering Germany's economy. And yet Italy found a solution. They had to. But I don't hear anyone talking about that, which is specifically why they're. We're doing this podcast, so why don't you get into the any story?
[00:03:40] Speaker B: The other thing that you need to understand about italian politics is that grandmothers are very important. Okay? When the gas prices started to go up because of the shortage of gas and the blowing up of the north stream pipeline and so forth and so on, italian politicians immediately rallied around to figure out how to lessen the impact of this on the millions of old women living in small apartments in the country, because it's literally the touch of death third rail of italian politics if you actually make things bad for grandma. So given that, what Italy did was it started immediately to address the energy shortage. Italy runs on gas. There's a lot of gas that's needed. Most houses depend on it for their heating and energy. There's some solar, there's some other little bit of hydro. But basically Italy's energy runs on gas. And when the Germans started to restrict the gas because they couldn't get it from the Russians, the italian government sent the chairman of EnI, which is the italian national oil company, out to address the issue.
Italy is fortunate that it has a lot of ports, it's a peninsula, and it has a lot of oil processing capability and storage. So they can basically import lng, and they have storage capacity and the ability to actually feed it into the network relatively well.
So they started doing that. And they also have a pipeline that most people don't know exists called the transmed pipeline, which links Sicily and Tunisia. And that basically is a pipeline that transports north african gas into Italy.
They increased the throughput of that pipeline by over 50%, doing new deals with Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco. They basically went around and basically did all these deals. They had a long history of working with North Africa. And the founder of Eni, his name is Enrico Matei, actually had a role in algerian independence from France. So they have like, reservoirs of goodwill with North Africa that they were able to take advantage of. And they're also working to stem the migrant flows and so forth and so on with the North Africans. So they do have a very strong relationship with North Africans, and they're trying to position Italy now as a gas hub for Europe. Before, the Germans getting their gas from the Russians through the pipelines were feeding it to the rest of the EU, including Italy. But now Italy is trying to essentially replace that or substantiate that by gathering all the gas from North Africa and feeding it to the rest of Europe, south to north. So they're investing significant money in that, and it looks like that's going to be a new reality in Europe. So Italy took the situation, which is messed up for everyone, and started to make lemonade from all the lemons and trying to take advantage of the situation, and they're doing quite well with that. The energy costs did not create a major problem like they have in Germany.
Their speed at actually addressing the issue and making things happen is quite remarkable.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: And, hey, we can testify to that fact. We have not seen our gas bills increase, right?
[00:07:32] Speaker B: No, they haven't. And I told you this when we were all worried about the. The gas prices going up, reading all the english press and the german press, and I said, it's not going to happen here because Nonna. Right. There's no way the italian government will allow the gas prices to get out of control because they won't exist tomorrow if they try that.
[00:07:54] Speaker A: And hey, listen, do not underestimate the power of Nona in this country.
It is real. If you go on social media, you can see it all over the place.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: Yeah. If you don't understand that, you don't understand Italy, that's for sure.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: Italy treats their elderly, their older people, much differently than other countries do. We've certainly seen this firsthand because we've lived in a lot of them, a lot of cultural realities. I mean, if you look at the two aging populations, Japan and Italy, I think Japan's average age used to be 25. Now it's around 40. So anyway, it's just. It's an issue.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: Yeah, it's tricky. But in Italy is more than that, because Italians don't have a strong national identity. They have something called campanilismo, which means that they have a loyalty to their own village. But more importantly, it's family village, maybe region Italy only when the Azuri are actually playing. So, you know, they really have a strong sense of family. And there is no way that anybody is going to mess with Nomna. In fact, you know, somebody joked, if the Carabinieri were told, you know, your grand, somebody's grandmother did something wrong, go arrest her. They would say, if you think that's a good idea, why don't you do it? We're not going to touch them.
[00:09:16] Speaker A: Okay. Hey, let's not underestimate the chaos and stress that's occurring here in Europe. Let's move on to Maloney and China and the topic of war.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: Yeah, so Italy, like China, is all about peace. Okay? In our constitution, we have an article that says that we repudiate war now and forever, which means that italian troops never get sent anywhere except on peacekeeping missions. They do not fight wars overseas. They are there to defend Italy and exceptionally to defend their NATO partners, which they have an exception to the constitution for that if they are attacked on, on their own soil. But we don't participate in foreign military adventures.
So that's the first thing. And Meloni knows that the italian people are vehemently against war and she's not going to mess with that. Really. She does have an interesting. She is basically walking a tightrope because she doesn't want to lose the credibility and support of the rest of the European Union. Von der Leyen and some of the Eurocrats and some of the other countries in Europe have been pushing this narrative about Russia. Bad. And this is all outrageous. Italy feels that Russia had no right to actually invade Ukraine. Peace is the important thing, but they're not going to go to war over it. And they will not send italian soldiers anywhere. They will never allow Ukraine to either join NATO or the EU unless the conflict is over. And the Ukrainians genuinely accept the Copenhagen criteria. Ukraine, despite all the rhetoric, is in no position to join the EU. It would just be a huge sucking sound. It would take all of the resources it needs, everything.
And it doesn't provide any net benefit to the european project whatsoever. So it's not in a position to do that. Now. That doesn't mean that if they have a genuine desire to fix those things, like Romania, Bulgaria, and many of the other countries that have joined the EU, they could fix the corruption, they could fix their infrastructure, they could meet the Copenhagen criteria, at which point they're welcome to join the EU, but we're not going to let them in early while there is massive corruption and nobody knows where the money goes.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, speaking of money, Meloni's walking a tightrope, right? She's waiting for the recovery funds that are of coming soon.
[00:11:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
Italy was badly hit by the COVID pandemic, and the European Union's Covid recovery funds were largely earmarked for Italy. They got the largest share of their recovery funds and they're using it to improve their fundamental infrastructure.
A lot of it was used for construction and improving Internet and improving the building's ability to not waste energy, insulate buildings, building construction, various programs that were funded by the european money to improve Italy's position. And Maloney doesn't want to jeopardize that because the Europeans in Brussels have a tendency to try and weaponize the flow of money for people that are not following the line.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: Yeah, but back to Maloney and China, didn't they bow out of the Belt and Road initiative?
[00:12:45] Speaker B: I don't think that's necessarily the case.
Italy was the only country in the g seven large european country to join the Belt and Road initiative in the first place. That was done under Conti. Meloni inherited that. Now if you listen to Meloni, of course, some of the anti fascist rhetoric from the EU, and they didn't like Meloni and she was on her best behavior and blah, blah, blah. But fundamentally, her economists said that the deal was somewhat one sided.
China didn't buy that much italian stuff and they were going to export a ton of chinese stuff to Italy. And her economists felt that the deal was not a good deal for Italy in the current situation. Now, that doesn't mean that the Belt and Road initiative is bad for many countries. It has provided a definite positive impact. And there are other countries in the EU, like Greece, that are part of it. The Chinese have built out the port of Piraeus and Athens as part of the Belt and Road initiative to get access to the Mediterranean. And Italy was all set to do the same. But then she pulled the brakes on it when she actually came in. And it served two purposes. One, to reassure european partners that she was a team player, and two, to get out of a deal that she perceived to be not beneficial to Italy. Having said that, the Ukraine war and the stress that the economy has been put under, plus the idiocy of the american sanctions regime and their insistence on forcing the Europeans to do things against their best interests, is impacting all of Europe, particularly Germany. And Germany is really suffering from that. And Italy doesn't want to make the same mistakes. So what shes done is shes gone to China to reset the relationship. And she was able, during her week visit to China, to essentially reset the relationship. She signed a triannual deal, which is a better deal than what she had before with the Belt and Road initiative. And the Chinese are going to be investing in italian factories, especially for electronic cars or electric cars, and various other technological joint ventures, which is a good thing for the italian economy and a good thing also for the Chinese. The Chinese never do anything that isn't a good thing for them, but they're into win win. So this deal is more of a win win than the previous deal was. And she was determined to come away with something signed.
[00:15:26] Speaker A: Certainly two countries that understand trade.
[00:15:29] Speaker B: There was a little italian guy named Marco Polo a few hundreds of years ago who opened up the trade with China in the first place. So Italy has always had, for centuries, a relationship with the Far east, specifically China and the Middle Kingdom. They've always had a very good relationship with China. In fact, when China opened up in the eighties and Nixon had the famous meeting with the chinese communist government, they needed everything. They were incredibly poor. They just come from their cultural revolution. It was a nightmare. And Italy built the first modern hospital in China for free. Here's a gift from our people to your people. And the Chinese are very transactional, and they remember things like that. So when we had the COVID disaster, the Chinese sent some of their best experts to help the Italians when they were suffering. And there've always been a strong relationship between the Chinese and the Italians. And the Chinese have invested significant money in italian businesses, making textiles, doing factories, and so forth. Some people think that's predatory, but they employ Italians, and they're bringing a level of management that the Italians necessarily don't always have, because they don't think as long term as the Chinese. They prefer to be in chaos and do everything on the spur of the moment. The Chinese are, we think, 100 years ahead, blah, blah, blah. So it's actually a good partnership as long as you make sure you don't get taken advantage of. I think it goes places.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: Yeah. We've lived here on and off for 25 years, certainly for the last 1011 years. And the one country I've seen penetrate Italy is China with business.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: Yeah, well, China makes business in roads, into everywhere. They're very good at business. And China is totally. Is very similar to elite. It doesn't like war because war is bad for business. Donald Trump in the United States has the same attitude because he's also a businessman. And aside from the military industrial complex who make money making bombs, everybody else knows that war is bad for business. It kills people. It basically ruins factories. It makes the price of raw materials go up. It basically is a bad deal for business in general. And the Chinese would just like everybody to stop fighting. And they all winden by economically doing business. Now, there is an argument that the Chinese have slave labor or very cheap labor, and they undercut the business model in their favor to get as much of it as possible, which can be managed with tariffs. And basically eventually, if you sit down with them and do a deal, you can eventually get a decent negotiation. But you have to be able to negotiate and not just wave weapons around. So that is happening. Maloney is doing that. And she's also building essentially a back plan in case things get even worse with the EU and with other things. There's no guarantee she won't rejoin the BrIcs. She's very upset with van der Lione for things that van.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: As one should be.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: As one should be. But, you know, Meloni's not going to take any crap. I mean, she's got actual popular support and she was elected. She's not some bureaucrat that got put there. Do some backroom deals like, say, Kamala Harris, who didn't get a single vote.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: Hey, let's slide into remote work and some of the other topics we want to touch upon. I mean, a small digression. I'm always surprised how few Americans live in Italy, but there are a lot of barriers. There's, of course, the language barrier, the bureaucracy, the visas, work life balance, and just various cultural realities that we like to discuss. But has it gotten any easier to work here?
[00:19:42] Speaker B: Yes. Yes, it has. But of course, if you had to pick a place for an american, Italy is not a good place because they don't speak English very well. You know, most american expats end up in England. And of course, now that's not part of the European Union, so it doesn't really count, although it does count for the Americans because they're outside of the US and every place is either us or non us. It's huge, amorphous mass of things that are not us. But in Italy, it's very difficult to get work. We don't have a lot of large employers. We don't have, you know, there's a time, there's a lot of tiny little micro enterprises, but micro enterprises are all family run and they don't really hire people because they're basically going to give the job to their nephew. Getting jobs with italian companies is quite difficult.
[00:20:32] Speaker A: We've got a colleague, Jeff, who manages to do remote work all over the.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: Globe, but he does it because he's working for an american company remotely. Okay, the digital nomad phenomenon. As started before COVID I spent some time working with the largest remote work company in the world, which is based in Texas and has employees literally everywhere, 200 countries employees, contracted people, mostly not employees. But the point is that Jeff does work for a digital company, and he's able to do remote work that's grown exponentially since COVID when they had all the at home stuff. And people realize that with the right tools and the right methodologies, you could work without having to be in the office. And now there's a little bit of a push to pull people back into offices because you do lose something that way. And so it's dying down a little bit. But Covid made it obvious that it is possible to usefully have employees that are located wherever they want to be located. So there's a lot of expats that are sitting on beaches in Thailand and other places, and they work for a short period of time before moving on because they don't want to deal with the problems and complexities of being full time residents and taxpayers in the different locations. So they swap. In the European Union, you're supposed to be, you know, going, you can't stay more than three months in any given country in Schengen before you have to leave Schengen for three months, and then you can come back for another three months. So you can't be in the European Union for more than six months, and you can't be in any one location for more than three months without having a three month break in between. So what Geoff does is he does three months in Europe, and then he does three months outside of Europe in some place like Albania, and then he comes back to Europe, and he's enjoying that a lot. To do that, you need something which Italy has just introduced last year, and a lot of other countries have as well, which is the digital nomad visa, okay? It's a visa that allows you to work remotely. You get to pay your taxes wherever you're actually based and work. And the idea is that if you're only here for three months, you're spending money, right? You're a hiring. You have to have an apartment or something that you have to prove that you have a residence and you're not homeless and that you're not a burden on the state and that you have health insurance, and there's various other criteria that you have to meet. Basically, you can't cost the country any money, and then you can stay here and spend money on hotels and restaurants and all the things, you know, groceries, whatever you're spending money on as part of your digital nomad thing. And you can do that for three months, then you leave, and then three months later, you can come back and do it again. So that exists.
There are companies that help people get that kind of a visa, and it's fine.
So they have made some steps in that direction. They've also made it easier to do the bureaucracy. Italy used to be an incredible nightmare when it comes to paperwork, but now many things are beginning to be possible to do online.
For example, taxes. We do our taxes. We have a guy who basically sorts them all the taxes, and it's all online.
I don't have to worry about it.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: The commercialista.
[00:24:14] Speaker B: A commercialista, but it's an online commercialista. You never have to go see him, you never have to collect mountains of paper. It's just all online. And you can sign your tax returns and your paperwork with the IR's, the italian IR's all online with digital id and certifications and so forth. Italy has a lot of problems with people essentially evading tax and things like that. So to address that, and also they spent money on this from the european Covid recovery funds. They wanted to make it so that you can do electronic signatures. You don't need notaries for everything. And that is gradually taking hold. Not everywhere and not for everything, but it's refreshing, right? It's easier now to do your taxes in Italy than it is to do your taxes in the states. You know, we know that because we do your taxes and we do my taxes, and one is easier than the other now. So that's a change. And it's relatively recent.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: Okay, so we've covered some economic realities regarding Italy, so let's get into some entertaining cultural realities, specifically about the Piemontese. As I keep teasing the audience with the secret that needs to, to be told, they're practically exercising a rearguard action against modernity, in a way. And I've interviewed twelve Italians from this northern region, artisans, winemakers. And it's a very complicated project because it's separated by essays and interviews. And it had to be in both Italian and English, because the interviews were done in italian and it made sense. And I think they'll want to read about themselves, at least I hope. But Francis, listen, you're half Piemontese. Why don't you give us some of your impressions of this most industrious of regions, large and lovely, and we lived there for seven years.
[00:26:06] Speaker B: Well, it is a large region, but many regions are large. I'm biased, of course. Italy is a loose collection of regions, all of which are very different. Famously, everybody knows there's a huge difference between the southerners and the northerners, but there's a less noticed difference between the various northern tribes, Piemonte and Veneto and Lombardy are the main ones. And then you have the Trentini and the Friuliani and the Hausta. And the people from the main ones basically resent those guys because they have special tax deals and they don't send any of their money south.
So the mystery of Italy. Yeah, mister Vitaly, I mean, the Lombards make the most money, okay? That's Milan and surrounding region. And, you know, that are banking and finance and big enterprises and stuff. And they own things and play games with other people's money, you know, much like London. But the Piedmontese are really down to earth. They manufacture things. They're. They're closer in that to the. To the Venetians or the Veneti, because the Venice. Venice itself is very small town, but the region is quite productive around it, including places like Verona and Vicenza and so forth. So in Piemonte, it's like a mini country.
It's a region, but it has everything. It has a seaside on Lago Maggiore.
It has mountains, obviously. That's why it's called Piemonte.
And it has the Po valley, which.
[00:27:40] Speaker A: Is the foot of the mountainous.
[00:27:42] Speaker B: At the piedmonton means the foot of the mountains. Exactly. So it has a lot of different things. It's a microcosm of everything. Piemonte has the highest biodiversity per square kilometer of any place in the world. There are various reasons for this, but there's nothing quite like it geographically, which is a complicated story. But there are tens of thousands of species of animals, plants, herbs. As you mentioned in your book with Anna, the component provinces of Piemonte are very different. You go from Vercelli, which is flat and wet, where they grow over 50% of Europe's rice.
And then you go to places like Biela, which is all about wool, which makes some of the best wool in the world for companies like Medigallo, Zenya, Ceruti, various other finance places, fashion houses and so forth. They get all their wool from Biela. Then you get Asti, the astigiano and the Monferrato, where they make the best wines, as we know, because we used to live there. And then you have, you know, provincial di Cugno, where they make hazelnuts and chocolate and every conceivable thing. They're just a massive powerhouse of productive producing stuff.
[00:29:07] Speaker A: Everyone talks about Germany being the economic powerhouse of Europe, but Italy could be construed as the agricultural powerhouse.
[00:29:15] Speaker B: Yes, it is. But it's not just that. It does produce a lot of agriculture products. It also produces a lot of products. Brunette Cunho produces more farm equipment, tractors and tools and so forth and so on than any place else in Europe, right? I'm sure the Americans have places that do more, but in Europe, Cugno is where all that stuff comes from. So you have, in Piemonte, you have a lot of people that are very non pretentious, hardworking, self sufficient.
I like to call them piemontese rednecks because they're not that cultured, not like the guys in Milan or the guys who go to the opera and Venice and that and the other. These guys, they just work hard and they produce more high quality stuff than anybody else per capita. And it's very impressive because they make great neighbors. They're tough, self sufficient, they work hard, and they have festivals. Like every weekend there's a festival somewhere, and they put their products, their local produce on display. They have a Risotto festival here, they have a wine festival there, mushroom festival, cheese festival, whatever you have, they have a festival where they serve their products. And more likely than not, those products are the best in the world for what they're doing at that moment in time. In your book, I believe you mentioned the cheese from Rocca Verano, which is winning awards as being one, of course, the rubiola cheese. And, you know, they just have these villages that are just amazingly productive and do amazingly high quality stuff. It's just so surprising.
And nobody knows about it because they don't blow their own trumpets at all.
[00:31:00] Speaker A: But, hey, that's my job. And it's not easy, you know, just to fly into Piemonte. You can fly into Torino and other parts, but it's not like Rome or Florence or Venice. But these people, the Piemontese, are so attached to their land that they make it appear magical. And this is one of the central themes in the book outside of tradition. And I centuries old craft. And I think this will resonate with people through these characters that I interview. Even Luigi, the car mechanic, he's fantastic. But, you know, today we're so plugged into our technology and our gadgets, but these people, these Piedmontes are staying plugged into their land, and they just, they really appreciate the treasure beneath their feet. And I think this is a message that will resonate.
[00:31:47] Speaker B: Well, to mention, to your point on technology, they are, you know, less technology. But, you know, Loew solo has every single inhabitant in a WhatsApp group, okay? So if anything happens anywhere in any of the fields or if there's a dog who takes one step out of the way, everybody in town knows about it. Because they're basically, you know, they're all cell phone based and they are using technology to some extent.
[00:32:16] Speaker A: And maybe more importantly, I think they're retaining their own narrative because we can all feel the weight of the propaganda. And sometimes it's narrative that just feels like it's being shoved down our throats or it just feels this way sometimes. So they retain their own right. I mean, we have to retain our own mind and imagination and they retain. They retain their own news. And I just don't think they're as manipulated.
[00:32:38] Speaker B: They are resilient to manipulation because if the government says the sky is blue, the PM and T's will check to make sure it's not green.
They always are basically questioning what they have. And they believe their own eyes and they believe their neighbors because they don't feel a whole bunch of, you know, they don't wave italian flags around or any of that.
The only time they do that is when the Azuria plane, basically.
The other thing is that they're very, very tight knit community. It's hard to break into it, which took you a while, but you're finally dead and now you're writing about it, which is phenomenal because most people will not see.
[00:33:22] Speaker A: I broke the seven year rule. It's like the same in Seattle. They have the same rule. It takes seven years to be invited into someone's home and in their life. But once they asked me to teach the little kids English once a week, it was kind of like crossing a threshold. And I was guided through their culture and I just had to write about it. And I really hope the listeners will look forward to my book because I've interviewed twelve people. And even if it took me 20 years to find my bliss, I had to cross the Atlantic and live in a half dozen european capitals to find mine. These people, these Piemontese, did not have to move a mile to find their own. They found their bliss. And you're going to read all about it. And the book will be in English and Italian. And I think Francis, we've covered all the bullets. And I hope our listeners enjoyed this because we do like to discuss cultural realities. And I know it's a very stressful time for a lot of people. We just found out this morning one of Francis colleagues who lives in Greece, his house burned down, all the burning fires. What a tragedy. Just shows how close we are, just one step away from the struggle. So I hope everyone is staying safe out there. And hey, listen, I hope you're enjoying your holiday. And this podcast, it's been a while since we last spoke with you out there. And again, my book is called the Personal Legends of Piemonte. Hopefully it'll be out in a month's time. The translation is taking its time. I found a wonderful woman, but she wanted to work closely, which I really appreciate. And, you know, piano, piano, as they say here. And it's all in the details, and I want to make sure they're right. And the Italians do love their details. Francese, what's the word? Diatrologia.
[00:35:03] Speaker B: The art of understanding what is behind what you're seeing.
[00:35:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, the Italians really dig details and you see it everywhere. I mean, I've got this one story that might illustrate it. We have basically, like the church bells of Italy, the sound you hear constantly, or the taparella being raised and lowered. They're the heavy blinds outside the window, and they keep the heat out in summer and the cold out in winter because it gets very cold here on Lake Garda in winter and very warm now in summer. So anyway, my taparelli, these blinds on the balcony on one of our balconies, the taparelli broke. And so before I called the company, I thought I'd ask my friend Mariano, because he's just a great guy. He lives downstairs. So anyway, he came up and he spent 2 hours looking at this very large contraption that's above, right below the ceiling. And he inspected it for 2 hours and figured out how it worked. He'd never done this before, but he fixed my taparella for me. I didn't need to call the company. So anyway, I think it's just a nice story. And anyway, I will offer far more cultural realities in my book coming out quite soon called Personal Legends of piemonte. And I want to thank everyone for listening. I hope you're enjoying your holiday, hope you enjoyed this podcast, and we will talk soon. Arrivederci. Oh, and please check out my
[email protected], ciao for now. Bye.
