The woes of flying Air France and our first few days in Berzo

Saluti da l'Italia! 

We've been in Berzo for 4 days now, and each one has been filled with visiting family and beginning the task of readying the house.  All of that is so wonderful (even cleaning the house) compared to our trip over on Air France.  Where to begin.....we arrived at the airport in San Francisco 3 hours early to check-in as recommended for international travel.  When we walked through the door, the check-in area was absolute chaos, with hundreds of people standing in "line".  We had been unable to print boarding passes before going to the airport because the Air France system would not accept our confirmation number or airline ticket number, so we had to wait in the regular check-in line and not the one for those with boarding passes, which was considerably shorter.  While in line, a large group (50+) of French tourists strong-armed their way in front of Rachel, so now we had so many more people in front of us in an already ridiculously long line.  I'll save everyone reading about the details of the ensuing nightmare other than to say that these French tourists were the rudest and most disrespectful people I've ever seen.  They actually were shoving children out of the way to move forward in the line!! A lady next to us who was French-American had enough of their behavior and barreled her way through the crowd with us in tow.  I don't understand French but I could sure tell that expletives were flying about.  All in all, it took us 2 hours to get to the check-in counter, where another surprise awaited us.  We had extra suitcases to pay for (of course we had lots of suitcases!) so instead of accepting the fee for those at the ticket counter, we had to go stand in yet another line to pay, which had about 5 people in front of us.  By this time, I'm figuring we were going to miss the flight.  After 20 minutes ow waiting in that line and finally paying, we were given priority through security and made it to the plane with about 15 minutes to spare!  After landing in Paris, the nightmare continued on our continuation flight to Milano since our plane was about 1 hour late in arriving.  We literally had to run from one terminal to the next, having to stop for passport inspection and yet another security check.  We made it to that flight with about 20 minutes to spare.  Never again will we fly Air France and I would highly recommend that anyone reading this doesn't either.  The rude behavior of the French is legendary and in that one day I had enough to fill a lifetime.

Now on to the good part - Italia - where people are anything but rude and disrespectful (and no, I'm not being ecocentric here!).  We arrived in Milano and spent the night there to help adjust to the time change. So far, so good with that.  The next morning we drove to Berzo - what a great feeling and welcome we received after the French debacle.  We went straight away to the house where Rachel got the first viewing of her Italian home.  We've spent the last few days taking stock of all their is to do, which is really quite overwhelming.  We are making progress daily, but there's still so much yet ahead before we can move in.  Our hope is that within a few weeks we'll finally get to sleep in house.  Meanwhile, we are enjoying life at Casa Riboli and the hospitality of our extended family here in Berzo.

Today we went to Bergamo with our cousin Paolo to sign up for internet access and I'm actually writing this email from Casa Riboli.  We've moved up in the world!!  The connection is painfully slow but, hey, it works. Tomorrow we will return to Bergamo to shop at Iper, which is a giant supermarket, and to visit my cousin Giorgio who is in the hospital there. Although this week has been filled with "house things", next week we'll get a well earned break, as we're off to visit Venezia and Padova.  The "Festa della Birra" (Beer Festival) is in Berzo next weekend, and we'll be back on the last evening of that to enjoy some time with our comune (community).  

We'll post some pictures when we get to Venezia next week, where the internet connection should be must faster.  It took 10 minutes just to get access to the blog - I can't imagine how long it would take to upload some photos!