Today is a special day. As it happens, my part of Borgo is crawling with construction crews large and small. Six of them, to be exact. Only two of my closest neighbors are not doing some major work on their houses at this particular time. As I write, construction is taking place even in my own house. The sounds that surround me since early morning are truly amazing. There are drills buzzing. There are saws whining. There are hammers banging. There are cement mixers groaning. There are men of all ages yelping and yowling. God be praised that they are all Christians, I console myself every now and then, for tomorrow is fucking Sunday.

Addendum (October 21, 2015)

Having stumbled upon this piece in one of my uncharted journeys through my writings, I was kind of surprised by it. Why so many construction crews around my house at the time? After a quick glance at the date, I smiled to myself knowingly. Of course, the global real estate boom came to its crashing end four months later. Although not many people in Motovun understood the reason for the skyrocketing prices of their houses at the time, construction crews vanished from the hilltown only a few months after the crash. No house was bought or sold for years after the onset of the global financial crisis. Even now, people sell their houses only under duress, but buyers are still hard to find in spite of dramatically reduced prices. Construction crews are also hard to find. In my part of Borgo, now it is permanent Sunday.