Bars open early in the morning, around seven, seven thirty, and students and workers go there to have breakfast and get up courage before facing the working day. When I go to look after my mother in Pontremoli, I take my laptop with me so that I can work on the blog, but then, as my mother doesn’t have internet, I have to go to an internet caffè to upload the articles. That’s what happened last Friday.
I got up early in the morning and went to the ACLI bar where you can use the internet for free if you buy something (coffee, a pastry etc.), but at eight in the morning the place was already crowded. Standing at the bar near the entrance, drinking coffee, talking politics, and commenting on the latest news were the council workers, wearing their orange work outfits.
I looked for a table where I could put down my laptop, but they were almost all occupied by groups of students from the nearby secondary school. I managed to find one free and settled myself in there. I turned on the computer, then I went to order my breakfast: cappuccino and brioche. The brioche was exquisite, hot, light, fragrant.
At the table behind me four girls of about 16 years old were seated. One of them was practising for her oral exams in history and geography. I was fascinated, and couldn’t help listening. She spoke about the European Union, from its foundation with the Treatise of Rome in 1957 up until the Schengen Treaty of 1985 that did away with the internal frontiers, and the creation of the single currency, the Euro, in 2002.
Then she went on to list the 27 countries of the EU, their capitals, and principal economies! She had a temporary mental block about Germany: “The capital of Germany …., capital …” After a few seconds of flabbergasted silence from her companions, it came back to her: “Berlin!” she exclaimed with relief.
Having finished with geography, she moved onto history: from the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476 to the birth of the Holy Roman Empire with Carlo Magno! She spoke with confidence and precision, and this reassured me: it’s not true that all young people are ignorant and illiterate, there are still those who study with commitment and satisfaction. If anything, it’s our politicians who give a bad example because they don’t know how to use the subjunctive or the ‘h’!
At eight thirty the bar emptied! The students went to school, the workers to work. Just a few minutes later those who were waiting for the shops to open at nine to do their shopping arrived.