An italian story

Mika and his band mate Rocco have a joke which involves the speed at which they pack up. When they pack up right after they are done that is referred to as American style. When they lounge around for a while and have some drinks before packing up that's French style. When they just leave their stuff and pick it up the next day that's Corsican style. That's pretty much how this crew operates. At the end of the show I pack up. Ages later the other guys start to deal with packing their stuff then just decide to make arrangements to pick it up the next day. Italian style is apparently somewhere out there beyond French style.
When we arrived in the early afternoon at Gabice Mare it seemed like a ghost town. It felt a bit like one of those post apocalyptic movies in which you're the only people left in the world. The town itself is a summer resort spot on the Adriatic. It has the feel of a cross between the village from The Prisoner and Atlantic City. The club was closed up when we got there so we headed down to the beach which was only a few blocks away. I'd never seen the Adriatic Sea before. It was cold and wet out but it was still cool to walk on the vast beach without a soul in sight. Eventually our host Roberto showed up at the club. Apparently we arrived during siesta time which explains why all the shops were closed and no one was around. We needed to change out one of the tires so later on in the early evening Roberto hopped in our van to show us the way to his buddy's shop. The plan was to run a few errands as well. Roberto owns a few bars and restaurants around town and is the perfect guy for a successful bar. He's gregarious and nice. The kind of guy you'll order extra drinks from just so you can hang out and talk to him at the bar.
Before we dealt with the tire we went to the Italian equivalent of costco. Roberto does all his shopping for the bar there. I thought of my dad as I walked around all the shelves full of bulk items. We picked up a case of non-alcoholic beer for Kamil and headed to the tire place. Roberto's buddy hooked us up big time changing out one of our tires and only charging 5 euros (he came to the show later and we hooked him up).
After that the real adventure began. Roberto told us that we just had to pick up the bass amp and then we could head back to the club. Next thing you know we take the highway to another town entirely and then we start driving up a mountain. At this point it's getting pretty late and we still have to get back to the club and set up (not to mention eat dinner). Roberto is very nonchalant about the whole thing. "No problem," he says, though when I do the math I don't see how things get done on time. Just roll with it, I tell myself as I take a deep breath.
So we're driving up this mountain and suddenly Roberto tells us to pull over in to the small parking lot of an apartment building. "Are we there?" we ask him. "Is this where we pick up the amp?" He doesn't answer and after about five minutes of waiting this young hipster looking guy appears out of nowhere and walks up to the van. Roberto let's him in and tells us to continue driving up the mountain. Ten minutes of climbing later we're in a little town at whose center is a castle. It's not the original castle according to Roberto. That was destroyed in the war and then they rebuilt it because "some people live there. Now we have some wine," says Roberto as he promptly disappears. We stand around for five minutes wondering where roberto went, talking to the young hipster guy who plays in a hardcore band. The mysterious practice space where the amp is located is further up the mountain and our van won't make it all the way there so someone is coming down the mountain to bring it to us. Roberto casually reappears with a chunk of roasted pork and bread. "Now we drink some wine," he tells us as he leads us to a bar nearby. The bar is occupied by a group of grizzled old Italian guys animatedly playing some mysterious card game whose name no one with us knows. The bar has an old men's club kind of feel and apparently on the weekends there are strippers who give lap dances on a chair in the corner of the room. Roberto buys a bottle of local wine which is very good. We drink and eat pork sandwiches. Gradually a few different people come and join us. At a certain point I'm no longer able to contain my overly American need to complete the task we are actually there to complete so I ask Roberto about the amp mentioning that we still have to get to the bar and set up. "I'll phone the club and tell them to have dinner ready for us," he says as we get up. Apparently one of the guys who was drinking with us at this point was the guy with the amp in his car. When we go out to his car to get the bass amp we discover that he only brought the speaker cabinet and not the actual amplifier. He gets in his car to go back up the mountain and get the amp and Roberto says, "let's go have another bottle of wine!" I check the time and decide it's time to get all anal American style and I explain that we gotta get going and we're gonna wait right there until the guy returns with the amp. Finally he does and we load it up and head back down the mountain to the club.
When we arrive at the club we furiously set up and eat dinner and the show starts acceptably late which in Italy is right on time. Kamil feels that the over all show is best if I play last because I'm the most danceable and loud of all the acts. He does have a point that it'd probably be a little strange going from the energy of my set to his but I suspect somewhere in there he just doesn't want to go on after me. Consequently, since everything in Italy starts so late and because Kamil and Mika are naturally slow to get going, by the time I play it is very late and lots of people have left. I'm used to that though as it just reminds me of playing our regular Friday night shows at Pianos. I kick it hard for whoever is left and I make it happen. Most of all though I figure I'm auditioning for the bookers, laying the groundwork for coming back on my own. Roberto is excited to do a show in the spring on my own and I figure this town will be really hopping when the weather gets nice (there was a really nice crowd of interesting friendly people who materialized).
After the show I pack up American style. Everybody else hangs out a drinks and finally decides to just meet up at 1:30pm the next day to pack up. I arrive promptly at 1:30 and wait around an hour for the rest of the crew to show. By the time we're packed and ready to go we're already running late to get to the next show. And that's before the obligatory getting lost. When we arrive in Udine that night at the club we lock the keys in the van and have to call a lock smith but that's a whole 'nother Italian story which needs it's own telling...