Another big effort, for the first Encounter of ITALIANS IN BAHIA at the ICBIE, which took place on the evening of Monday, the 18th of March, with with beautiful weather of summer’s end, and it was a success. About fifty people, almost all of them new acquaintances, Italian workers and owners of tourist agencies, hotels, restaurants, construction firms and investors. At the ICBIE, we are used to work for the community of poor Brazilians around Ribeira, so we were not used to this kind of people. All the same, I found that this Italian community can be very useful to the social goals of the ICBIE. After my introduction, Emma Pellegrini, administrator of Italian affairs in Salvador, and Pierluigi Guerini, one of the the proprietors of the Grand Hotel Cocoon, spoke in favor of consolidating this group. We also took in a tidy sum, for the food we sold, and for a day we were transformed into a real restaurant, complete with a menu!
