Tonight, we experienced our first “blackout!” Some background information on this problem: In European establishments, running 2 or more major appliances (i.e. oven, dishwasher, washer/dryer, hair dryer, etc.) at the same time results in the immediate loss of electricity. In order to restore power, all devices using electricity at the time of the “blackout,” must be turned off and all appliances and power chargers must be unplugged.

Midway through making our dinner this evening, my roommates and four girls who had come over for dinner, realized that we did not have any clean plates or silverware. So, we decided to run the dishwasher since we didn’t have enough space available to clean them by hand. Unfortunately, we forgot that we already had the oven running. So, immediately upon starting the dishwasher, we lost all power to the apartment. Eight of us were now standing in our now pitch-black kitchen trying to figure out how to restore power to our place while out partially cooked food sat on the stove and in the oven.

After roaming through the apartment turning switches on and off and unplugging appliances and power chargers, we were still unable to turn the power back on. Since the gas on the stove still worked, we tried to light the burners using matches (since we couldn’t create the spark otherwise without electricity), but we couldn’t get our matches to light. So, we then searched the entire building for the secondary fuse box that could turn our power back on. Reluctantly, we knocked on our neighbor’s door, even though it is considered rude to do so in the evening in Italy. We were pleasantly surprised to find that we live next to a nice, old lady who helped us find the fuse box on the ground floor of our building.

After an hour of searching for anyway to turn power back on, and even considering going and purchasing candles and eating the mostly cooked pasta by candlelight, we were able to salvage the meal (and even somehow get a cork stuck in our wine bottle!)

Location: Via P.S. Mancini, 4, Milano, Italy