walk the walk, talk the talk

I woke up feeling strangely uninspired this morning, so I'm kind of glad I stopped by Cafe Genova on my way back from the building.

Strange, too, because last night was another fun night - what with all the Sake Bomb chants and the reminiscing that followed. Maybe all the recent socializing pushed me into some kind of mild withdrawal. Whatever it was, a solitary coffee over the BBC World News was not going to cut it this morning.

Maria remembered me right away and introduced me to the random couple already sitting at the bar as "another guy who wanted to practice his Italian." Then we got talking. And I was quite the chatter box, doing the best with the limited vocabulary God gave me. I got to know a little bit more of her past. How she and her husband (distant cousins with the same last name - weren't we just talking about that last night???) left Parma in 1964 to come to Montreal, with no other family to keep her company or help her out. She opened the original cafe two years later at the age of 26 in a spot that would later be taken over by a wheelchair salesman - where she insists you can still make out her sign on the bricks, if you look close enough.

But more than that, we just talked about how much we both love the neighbourhood - even if my one year experience has got nothing on her forty five. She mentioned the little fish market just steps from my place and how Drolet is hands down the nicest street in Little Italy because it reminds her of the country.

And how the option of moving out to the suburbs always felt like a second emigration; one she never had the heart to repeat.