Comings and goings

It's been almost a month since my last post, not because nothing has been happening, but because a lot has happened quickly. My mother has come to visit and left, and my family has gone home. And, finally, I have not only my residence certificate, but also a bank account, at La Posta (the post office).

The trip back for Cyndi and kids was complicated by an early morning departure time from Malpensa. The earliest shuttle bus from Lugano to Malpensa is 5am, and that's completely out of the question for a 6:15am flight. There are hotels in the area of the aiport, but there were problems of availability as well as high cost, and most of them are not running their airport shuttles early enough in the morning, so they didn't seem to solve the problem. We settled on hiring a taxi, which we got for a good university rate of 230 CHF. We asked whether it would be big enough --- no problem. The taxi called the night before the trip to be sure we really meant 3am and to double-check our address, and we asked again whether it would be big enough for 3 people and all their bags. No problem. The taxi showed up at 3am, right on schedule, and said "are those your bags?" Yup. No way to fit them in that regular sedan, along with the people. They offered to call another taxi, at the same cost (i.e., 460 CHF altogether). That didn't sound like a good choice.

Fortunately we had made contingency plans. I took the car we are renting and followed the taxi to the airport, with Cyndi and Adrian in my car and Iris (whose Italian is best) in the taxi. No problem, after all.