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The month the country closes
Alex's mistake is a reasonable one and almost every newcomer makes it. The August shutdown is not a general slowing but a coordinated stop, inherited from the industrial practice of closing a plant entirely for two or three weeks rather than running it understaffed, and extended since to offices, workshops, professional firms and much of the public administration. Ferragosto on the fifteenth is its centre, and the fortnight around it is when the chiusura aziendale typically falls. Writing to an Italian company on the twelfth of August and expecting an answer is not unreasonable so much as uninformed. The traffic is the visible half. L'esodo and il controesodo are treated as national events with forecasts and a colour-coded calendar — the bollino nero warning Nadia mentions is published well in advance — and prices on the coast move with them. The advice Serra gives at the end is sound and widely followed: the last week of August is cheaper and emptier than the first, and fifteen kilometres inland is a different market from the litorale. Note also lo scaglionamento, the staggering of leave, which is negotiated rather than assigned: who gets ferragosto itself is a recurring subject for the kind of meeting Lesson 73 described.