Out with the old...

Recently it was Venice's turn for digital television. Over the last year Italy has been phasing in digital,region by region.  I'd see the anouncements publicised on TV every once in awhile, so I knew eventually it would be our time. What that meant was we'd either need to go buy new TV's or buy the decoder boxes that would allow our current television sets to work. 

We rented our apartment furnished, and were actually surprised when we arrived and saw it for the first time that there were two TV sets here- one in the living room and a smaller one in the bedroom. These were older sets, both Sony's, but functional.  Once we knew that it wouldn't be long before these would be unusable, we decided not to bother the landlord about TV's- cause we already knew what their answer would be! (That's right, they wouldn't be buying new TV's to put in the apartment).  We purchased a new flat screen TV from Panorama on the mainland, and moved the big old clunky TV from the living room downstairs to the storage closet.

Once Venice completely converted over to digital, that meant the TV in the bedroom wasn't functional at all anymore, since we didn't have a decoder box either.  We rarely watch TV anyway, so the one in the bedroom was just another dust collector.  We ( ok,  it was me), decided that the apartment doesn't have a huge amount of excess space to begin with, and it would be great if these old unworking TV's were out of here.   I noticed that there have been boats collecting old TV's after the switch to digital happened, and that made me think that perhaps electronics aren't allowed to be put out with our normal trash. Sure enough, that's correct.

We phoned our "Padrone"- landlord, in Italian, and told him we'd like the old TV's removed. Also, we had an old, non functional airconditioner sitting in the apartment, we'd like that gone as well.   He didn't give us any grief,just said he'd arrange pickup and let us know.  He was very prompt, pickup was set for this morning.  He told us Daniele would be by around 10am, we should have all the stuff downstairs ready for him.

Daniele is the landlord's handyman, jack of all trades, whatever you want to call him. Daniele has been by to solder a hinge on an old metal door on the back of the house. He's also done work painting and patching plaster down in the entryway.  Today his mission was to haul away junk in his boat. 

Right at the stroke of 10 am this morning, sure enough, Daniele rang the front door bell.  He and a buddy came in, took out the TV's that Mike had downstairs, and then came up to the apartment to help carry out the old airconditioner.  They went into Daniele's boat, and away down the canal they went.