Today we went to Church in Cuneo, the provincial capital, which is about one hour away by bus. We had a bit of a scare yesterday when we set out to find a way to get to Church. At our hotel, the manager said the busses don’t run on Sunday, so we should go to the train station. We went to the train station, and after poring over a schedule where everything said either that the train went on weekdays or that it didn’t go on holidays (Sunday is considered a holiday), we asked someone, who confirmed that the train simply doesn’t go on Sundays. So we walked over to the bus station, and finally figured out, after much scrutinizing of the cryptic schedule (well to us it was cryptic anyway), and some questions to passers-by in fairly broken Italian, that the bus did indeed go to Cuneo on Sundays. At least a few times.
We were actually quite lucky. We reached Church just before it started. Imagine our surprise to find that well over half of the branch is from South America and speaks Spanish. So we may not learn Italian very well from them, but we can communicate quite nicely. Better yet, many of them are of Italian descent and have claimed their citizenship jure sanguinis, just as Tony is in the process of doing. The Branch President’s wife works for an Immigration Center that helps people with it. So I’m going to get an appointment there and get their help with translations and making sure all our documents are in order. I feel quite relieved about that. We talked to all the Grandmas and Grandpas this afternoon from the park. Things are going well. La vita e bella.