A secret story about secrets

This post has to be kind of a secret, with false names for people and places. Forgive me for being a little vague, but trust that it's for my own protection-- as well as yours! But shh, reader, let's not get dramatic.

I recently went to a country that is next to the one I'm currently living in, but separated from it by a range of mountains known as the Malps. In the interest of saving money, I attempted to find free lodging for the Dude and myself through a website known as Settee Gliding. I was unlucky in doing so for our first city, Foam, and our last city, Lunch Meat, but successful for the cities known as Glorenze and Pirenna.

I had more than a bit of an inkling that our Settee Gliding host in Glorenze, known as Giuseppe, was going to be kind of a character. In the weeks and days leading up to our departure, he emailed me nonstop with meticulous advice in regards to train travel. (Later in our stay he delighted in telling me how I had overpaid for every other voyage of our trip since I had not requested his advice on those as well.) He also made it clear that breakfast was to be at 7:40 on weekdays and we would need to be out of his abode by precisely 8:23.

He picked us up from the train station on our first night and his first words were, "Quesyun: you dreenk leetle, normal, or mahtch wine?"

We arrived at Giuseppe's apartment and greeted his three other Settee Gliders, who were in the midst of preparing that night's meal. One of Giuseppe's rules is that each of his guests prepare a meal from their native land on one of the nights of their stay. The next night it was our turn, and I had decided to prepare Ma P-P's Chicken Cornbread. Giuseppe took us to the grocery store for provisions, where he used his grocery cart as a battering ram against unsuspecting bambina.

I told him we needed lettuce for an accompanying salad I planned to prepare. He strode away and returned shortly, thrusting a bag of iceberg into my face. Actually, I told him, I usually prefer the fancier mixed greens for this salad. "You say you want lettuce! Thees ees lettuce!" he barked.

The next hurdle was sour cream, which doesn't seem to exist in Europe. Maybe we could use crème fraîche, I postulated. When he claimed ignorance of the product, I decided yogurt would also do, and grabbed a pack of what appeared to be plain yogurt.

"How long you been in Europe?" Giuseppe asked. Since September, I told him. "And you dowan know our yogurt is sweet?!? Look, sugar!" he exclaimed, pointing to the ingredients label. As my Italian vocabulary is pretty much limited to buongiorno, ciao, grazie, prego, uno, due, and principessa, I am woefully ignorant of such alimentary words as the one used for sugar.

We got back to his place and he left us in the kitchen to fend for ourselves. I had to fetch him to find out how to turn his oven on, since I wasn't familiar with its controls. Before doing so, he started removing all the racks. "I can tell you dowan much use oven," he said. I do, actually, I said. "Then why you look at me so strange?" Because I have no idea what you're doing, I said. Turns out "less accidents happen" when you put the racks in at the same time as whatever you're cooking.

During the meal, one of the other Settee Gliders was talking to our host about the prodigious number of guests he has housed, and asked who among them had been the worst. This commenced a two-hour soliloquy during which he told us in painstaking detail about his worst offenders and all their evils. One of them got on the wrong bus trying to get to the train station near his place and was inaccurately told by her bus driver that she would be there soon, meaning that Giuseppe was forced to wait at the station for more than an hour. When she finally arrived, he told her to do the dishes he would have done had he been home and not waiting for her.

This person had left a "neutral" rating on his Settee Gliders profile, and in telling us this Giuseppe said that he expected all of us to leave him "positive" ratings. I did so (for I'm a wuss).

But let it be known in this secret space that Giuseppe of Glorenze is a niggling, nattering ninny!