Le persiane

Bellinzona is a real windy place and right now the "persiane" (foto) are battering against the house with the wind. If I ever leave this place I will miss the sound of that.

You cannot only open and close them but you also need to fix them because of the wind. On the outside with the little things to the right and the left of the photo, usually in the form of little heads (love them!!), and on the inside it's a bit more complicated. You need to fix an iron rod and that then gets fixed with another little piece of iron. Still, when it gets really windy they batter against the house, which can be annoying if someone in the house just forgot to fix them, because then it's real loud.

They are, however real useful in the summer, because you can close them and fix them and leave the window open so that the air can enter but nothing else... I guess that's also the reason why they are almost exclusively found in the South of Europe. A lot of people also close them around midday...

Wow, my English is definitely on the slope down... as my Italian is getting better and better... I now had the first "experience" that I used to have with English when I began to really speak well (well, that's in the past!!)-- using intuitively words that I hear but that I never actively learned, like I suddenly began saying "Son stanca" instead of "Sono stanca." (I'm tired.) In fact I do not hear anyone pronounce the "o" in "sono"... I've always loved arriving at that stage of language learning. Well, and I admit I now like Italian much better than English, sorry guys...