Inside the wrapper of each piece of candy is little piece of waxed paper with a saying, relating to kisses, written in several different languages. Mine say, "Lovers can live on kisses and water." It doesn't explain whether it is referring to the kind of kisses made of chocolate and hazelnut or the ones composed of lips and saliva.
Our train compartment contains an interesting mix of people. There are two Russians who speak no Italian, but a little English. They have tickets which say that they don't have assigned seats so they are here until someone comes along to claim their rightful place. Although there is also a bona-fide Italian man in the compartment with us, it had fallen upon me to use my best guessing ability and limited grasp of the Italian language and train culture to explain to them why they have paid the same amount as me, but are treated as squatters here in our compartment.
For awhile we also had a cute Italian college student with us - my cute American college student daughter has been assigned to a seat in a different compartment. The Italian student had a shopping bag from a store called Stradavarius which had a symbol of a treble clef as a logo. I wondered if she had a small three million dollar 18th century violin inside but she informed me that Stradavarius is actually a clothing company. That explains the smallness of the bag.
The most interesting occupant of our compartment, who was only here for about 30 minutes, was a wild-haired Italian woman who had strong opinions about everything which she delivered in rapid-wide Italian regardless of the nationality if the individual being addressed.
Her observations included a disdain for railroad rules that required her to sit in railcar 8 when she was perfectly content with us in car 5, a dislike of restrictions in general, an apology for Silvio Berlisconi and a skepticism about his being removed from running the Italian government for good and an unrestrained (and unanticipated) enthusiasm for Americans.
"Viva l'America!" she said as she left us.
To which the American replies, "Baci per l'Italia!"
