Subject, however, couldn't remember where it was exactly, or what it was called. So I asked OBDictator herself.

OBD: I'd like another bowl of porridge, if it please you, Sir.

Dilettante: Huh?

OBD: Don't beat me, Sir.

Dilettante: That's the name of it? (I am, at this point, trying to picture OBD and Subject in a S&M club and failing miserably. Though if they were, I know who would be wielding the whip.)

OBD: No no no. I'm working on it, getting close. It's literature.

D: I see. Would that be Dickens, or something to do with breakfast cereals?

OBD: Dickens. I think.

D:

OBD: Subject, what was the name of that pub?

S: Oliver Twist.

Lessons: D. doesn't know her Dickens very well, and Subject's memory improves immediately when ordered.

So, after lunch and many food related tours, we arrive in Soragno. We find our hotel, which is a 18th century coaching inn. Before that, it used to be the stables and other outbuildings for the castle, although now a variety of shops etc. separate the two. It's been restored, of course, and it's filled with antiquey stuff and an impressive collection of 17th century art, mostly portraits of kings and dukes and bishops and cardinals and other dead white men with improbable hair who wear red. It looks like the interior decorator pulled off a museum heist at some point. I like it.

We've been allocated our increasingly standard accomodation in the attic. To reach our room, we go though the bar, the lounge, another sitting room, up a flight of stairs, down a hallway, turn left, down another hallway (literally, this time: it slopes), along a flat hallway, down five steps, around a corner and along a short hall, turn left and go up another flight of stairs, and there's our room in the corner, right next to a portrait of a fleshy-faced cardinal with a cleft in his chin so deep it looks like he fell on an axe. First, we wonder how we'll ever find our way back to the lobby and, if we do, how we'll ever find our way back to the room. (I never really do, and keep trying to turn right when a left is in order. Or vice versa.) Then we wonder why, when faced with a room with a sloping ceiling, people succomb to the inevitable urge to wallpaper it along with the actual walls. Usually something patterned. It does not help. It's like living in a hatbox.

We take a brief nap, then venture outside to look around. In other words: Find the pub.

It's across the street.

W thinks I'm a godess. I think I'm very lucky.

Don't tell him.

It's a nice pub. What I can't figure out is what it's doing here. It's pub-like: wooden ceiling and beams, paneling, long wooden benches, a bit of upholstery, brewery signs on the walls. It's not just an authentic English pub, or a genuine English pub: it's a real genuine authentic Einglish pub, aside from the fact that it's in the middle of Emiglia-Romagna. Meaning it's a bit battered and dumpy and run down. The barmaid looks like she's had a hard life. I like it a lot. The bowls are filled with potato chips from the biggest bag I've ever seen. The barmaid comes out with a great big box and opens it. It looks like a case of family size potato chip packets. Inside is exactly one bag. Contrary to expectations, the chips in our bowl are not stale.

We've reserved a table at the restaurant in our hotel, which has three sets of knives and forks in the Guida Rossa. The food is excellent, although W cannot taste much of it because his sinuses are acting up. (Hint: foreshadowing.) The service, though, is awful. Oh, they bring the food while it's still hot and so forth, but getting anyone's attention is frustrating and futile. And the waiter commits what, to me at least, is one of the cardianal sins of service. The waiter, whom I shall call That Bastard, strolls off after taking our order. I call him back. We want wine. He hadn't asked-- can you imagine that? In a highly rated gourmet-type restaurant? In Italy? Where is the wine list? That Bastard deigned to bring it to us. W was in the bathroom, blowing his nose, when TB returns. I peruse the list, make my decision, and manage to get Bastard to come take my order. When he returns with the bottle, W is back. So he shows the bottle to W, so he can verify that it was, in fact, as we have ordered. "Show it to her," said W. "I didn't order it, I don't know if it's correct." So TB sort of waves it in my direction. I grab it so I can look at it carefully, as I'm starting to suspect our bastard waiter of pulling a fast one. But it was ok, so I hand it back and tell him so. He does the opening ceremony, then That Bastard pours a bit in W's glass for W to taste. W just shakes his head and hands it to me. So, much more than a bastard. A Misogynist Bastard. After that, we tried to deal exclusively with young-beleaguered-apprentice-waiter, who was efficient and courteous. He also brought me my coffee at breakfast. Apparently, That Misogynist Bastard needs his beauty sleep. Certainly couldn't hurt.

We didn't, as planned, return to the pub after dinner, as W's sinuses continued to give him problems. He was getting snippy, too. So we went back to the hatbox early, and I let W sleep in while I went to church.

It was Palm Sunday yesterday. The Italians don't mess with actual palms, but wander around with olive branches, which apparently they rip off of olive trees on their way to Mass, as I've certainly never seen someone selling them. Some of them, in fact, appear to be carrying small trees. Adds that certain amount of biblical versimillitude. I, not being a resident and too shy to denude some poor soul's olive tree, went empty-handed, although I picked up a quite respectable sized twig that had fallen off the branch carried by a particularly enthusiastic church-goer. I also had to stand in the back, having severly overestimated my likelyhood of snagging a seat.

When I got back to the hotel, I had to hoist W out of bed and into the shower to make check out time. When we got into the car, W informed me that we would not be looking at castles etc. as planned, as he was suffering mightily. W believes that no one ever gets as sick as he, no one ever suffers the way he does, and that he is therefore entitled to behave horribly to me and anyone else in his path, and that all his whims must be catered to as well. This is, in part, something that comes along with the Y chromosome, but W does it better than most. Or worse, depending on your perspective. When I, the possessor of two X chromosomes, get ill, W tells me to take care of myself, stay home, take it easy. And get him more cokes while I'm out. Which I, God help me, actually do.

I suggested lunch in a village nearby, as it was after noon, and restaurants don't stay open all day on weekdays, much less Saturday, and it would be too late once we returned to Milan. Plus, we had rented a car for the weekend precisely so we could to the sort of places we miss out on in our normally carless state. W agreed, but he didn't really agree, and we got into a huge horrible fight before we even covered the three blocks it needed to get us out of Soragna.

So we went back to Milan with empty stomachs, despite being in the gustatory epicenter of Italy. I cried all the way past Piacenza: once I get started, I can't stop. Then we spent three hours packing up and rearranging glassware and ceramics and liquor bottles and so forth for My Plumbing Nightmare. I will be unable to cook, of course, for the duration (all my casseroles have been packed up, the oven and diswasher are both full of glasses and crockery), plus there was no food in the house (we had planned, of course, to stay and eat in the Parma area on Sunday). We finished before five but, since it was Sunday and this is Italy, couldn't actually get anything to eat until 8:00 or so. Couldn't even sit on the couch, as it's full of cookbooks and crockery. W played on his computer (which, let's face it, is what he really wanted to do anyway instead of have a nice day out with me. He wasn't so deathly ill that he wanted to go directly to bed, now, was he? In fact, he didn't even go to bed until well after midnight. And I, with my allergies, used far more kleenex than he did, because once he took the medicine I got him at the farmacia Sunday morning the sinuses weren't really a problem.)

So, we ended up having pizza in a touristy place near the Galleria. Took us forever to get coffee and the check. And then we went home so W could play on his computer all night.