Bar Tales

Life, Laughter, and Local Wine: Stories from a Southern Italian Bar

Perched above the Crati Valley in Calabria, Bar Tales invites you into the heart of a hilltop village where the bar is more than just a place to drink—it’s where the community comes to life. Here, pizzas crisp in a wood-fired oven, laughter echoes across cobbled streets, and the stories are as rich as the local wine.

Johnny, an English expat long settled among the villagers, shares thirty true-to-life episodes alongside his best friend Mario. With gentle humour and genuine affection, they recount the surreal, the ordinary, and the wonderfully unexpected moments that unfold in and around the village bar. Each tale captures the quirks of small-town life and the enduring charm of friendship, all steeped in Southern Italian warmth.

Pull up a chair, pour a glass, and step into a world where everyone knows your name—and your secrets.

Excerpt from the book

“I’ve decided to become a vegan, Johnny,” murmured Carlo, the barman, out of the corner of his mouth. He looked around shifty-eyed to ensure that no one had managed the impossible: to hear him amid the din of exchanged bellows that passed for conversation. The words came more than half-drowned by the rock music he insisted on playing despite his patrons’ declared preference for the local tarantella tunes. Florence and the Machine blared their latest hit in competition with the raised voices in the bar.

Why men standing less than half a metre apart had to shout at each other to communicate baffled Johnny, an English ex-pat living in the remote southern Italian region of Calabria. Not allowing the general cacophony to distract him from this astonishing declaration, he stared aghast at his friend. Carlo he associated with barbeques on festive occasions of epic proportions, involving eating and drinking lasting all day, with steaks suited to famished Canadian lumberjacks. Not to mention the salamis, sausages, sheep’s and goats’ cheeses, and omelettes.

Johnny decided he’d misheard. “You’ve decided to become a pagan?”

He knew Carlo believed aliens had created mankind. This credence competed with Radio Rock to alienate the pot-bellied locals.

“Vegan, not pagan!” Carlo raised his voice and regretted it in an instant. His eyes revolved around the bar like a fugitive fearing arrest. He need not have worried because Armando, with a lifetime’s work on the State Railways flagging down and whistling off diesel trains behind him—hence a man with impaired hearing—was bellowing into the face of a fellow beer drinker from a range of several centimetres. Johnny, whose mobile contained an app that gauged decibels, had once measured Armando’s voice. The needle shot to ‘factory noise’—an equivalent Johnny felt underestimated the station guard’s vocal powers.

“You, a vegan?” Johnny creased up with laughter. “Then I’m a Dutchman,” he said—in his best Italian, coloured by a British accent he’d failed to lose in thirty years of living there—a comment that fell on deaf ears. Understandable given the circumstances, but Carlo thought, in confusion, it was better than trying to explain why their friend had suddenly become a citizen of the Netherlands!

Between serving drinks, Carlo confided that his veganism was only temporary and not founded on any deep ‘meat is murder’ convictions. On the contrary, far from worrying about animal welfare, he was concerned about his own health. Johnny scratched his head. The evening was becoming surreal. This fervid consumer of saturated fats, this reckless chain-smoking, grappa-guzzling badass barman was concerned about his health.

Johnny sank down on a bar stool to reflect, even as Carlo sidled to the door. An ardent group of smokers kept the entry open even in the depths of winter so that they could pay ‘lip service’ to the recent law forbidding smoking in bars. Half in, half out, Carlo lit up his thirty-fifth Marlboro of the day with the insouciance of a hardened ignorer of health warnings. At thirty-five, he had been a smoker for a quarter of a century. A standing joke among those closest to him maintained that he lit up his first Marlboro in his cot.