A couple of taxis to help us move

This morning at 9AM we had a meeting with the proprietari (owners) at our new apartment. When we arrived, there were two operai (workers) inside finishing up a few things. We waited for the proprietari to arrive to go through the apartment and ask them questions about a few things.

The proprietari showed us the new poltrona (armchair), the casettone (chest of drawers), and the asciugatrice (dryer) that they purchased for us. They told me that the donna delle pulizie (cleaning lady) was coming this afternoon to clean up the house before we moved in.

After our meeting with the proprietari, we walked back to our apartment to finish packing. We scheduled Simone's friend, Alessandro who is a tassista (taxi driver), to come and pick us up at 2PM.

Alessandro called me a few minutes before 2PM and we weren't ready. We knew we had to get all of our things in the downstairs lobby of our building. By the time we started taking our boxes downstairs, Alessandro arrived.

He parked in front of our building and prepared the car. Dave and I ran upstairs to get more things to put in the car. We packed the car as much as we could and drove to our new apartment. He helped us place everything inside of our building while we kept the portone (front door) open by using our neighbor's doormat.

I asked him if we could do one more trip, but he said that he had to eat lunch and take a break before his next shift. I asked him how much I owed him and he said 10 Euros. "Č troppo poco...ti do di pių." (That's too little. I'll give you more.) I tried to give him 30 Euros, but he wouldn't take it. He plucked the 10 Euros bill from my hand and said, "Grazie. Non voglio di pių." (Thanks. I don't want any more.)

We were grateful for his help. We took turns carrying our things up three flights of stairs and into our new apartment. We dropped everything off in the hallway inside our apartment and ran back down to retrieve more. It probably only took a few minutes, but we were so exhausted when we finished that we sat inside the apartment for a short while.

We walked back to our old apartment to pack up some more things and didn't call the next taxi until about 5PM. This time when I called the taxi company, I asked for a station wagon grande (a large station wagon) after we got all the boxes downstairs.

The man was very nice and helped us put everything in the car. When we arrived in front of our building, he just plopped our things outside of his car. Dave and I had to run things up to place inside the portone so they wouldn't be left on the street. The price wasn't too bad, 13 Euros.

After we dropped off everything inside the apartment, we walked outside so I could show Dave where the closest little supermercato (supermarket) is. We found out that it's even open on Sunday! I thought only Standa was open on Sundays, so this was a great surprise.

We grabbed some food from a Turkish place for dinner and took it back to our apartment. We ate dinner on our new kitchen table amid a million boxes and bags.

Even though we were both physically exhausted, we stayed up until midnight to put away our things in our new home. The excitement of a new place was all that kept us going. Tomorrow we have one last load and we'll be done. Moving is no fun, but being in our new place is amazing.

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