vigilia a salerno, or: when grannies get young again

here i am, back home.
home is salerno, south of italy. small nice city by the sea. maybe overcrowded with extremely dull people, but still plenty of lovely folks :)

speaking of dull... on xmas eve (vigilia) the local tradition is to scroll the whole day on the very very long pedestrian area (reminds of the hauptstrasse?? but ours's nicer!) and finish xmas shopping and meet everybody you know. and just eat a bite so when you go back home in the late afternoon you're ready for the big dinner.

i think i started hating this tradition when i was still at school. but when you're living outside for most of the year, you kind of feel it's somehow nice. even though you keep bumping into people you have no clue about anymore, and that's the best case, while the worst scenario is you meet someone really unbearable and find yourself mysteriously wishing them all the best for xmas and new year...

but still, once per year you can do it.

but apparently this year people are younger and younger (inside and outside) and feel they really want to party on xmas eve. so all the fancy bars have sound systems outside and dance music spreading all over the place. and since on our pedestrian there's a fancy bar every ten metres, the decibel amount of the whole area is huuuge!

and me and my mates, we're not young anymore. but even when we were younger, we were already feeling old. so we are looking for a quiet place to grab a bite and maybe a glass of wine and quietly speak with each other. but with me hobbling because of stupid sprain in the knee it's not really easy to escape from the crowded area.

so... we find ourselves sitting outside one of the youngest bars in the place, with unz unz music coming out and young people everywhere... and that's just because we are so old and wanted to get a seat!! (and obviously also because the plates full of food coming with the drinks looked extremely yummy...)

without any morality left, the grannies have become young again :)

[video coming soon]