by Giuseppe Marzano He arrives every day at 5.30, riding his bicycle.
He raises the shutter of his newsstand and, until 8pm, serves customers who purchase newspapers, magazines, scratch cards and mobile phone top-ups.
This is the life of Giovanni Valenti who, from his corner of Piazza Matteotti, for 36 years, has seen not only the habits of customers change, but also that part of the city which is the heart of the Europa-Novacella district of Bolzano.
With only a short break for lunch, he says, "I spend 14 hours a day here, every day, excluding the five days when there are no newspapers. Since I'm alone, I raise the mainsail at half past five every day of the week." year, without rest and I know neither Saturday nor Sunday".
"Over the course of 36 years my work has declined and changed a lot - continues the newsagent - Once upon a time it was all paper-based and all manual. On the one hand, computerization has given us a big boost, helping us to be faster, but on the On the other hand, it has penalized us, because many people now read newspapers and magazines with online subscriptions and we have suffered greatly from this".
Printed paper is no longer enough to maintain the newsstand's business.
"We try to integrate the income with games, with cell phone top-ups, with bill payments, with 'scratch cards' - Valenti continues - so we can still get by reasonably well".
If the alarm clock at a quarter to 5 is the "negative aspect" of his job, the newsagent in Piazza Matteotti knows how to appreciate what that very particular observation point which is his newsstand offers him.
"The beauty of my job is getting to know so many people, so many beautiful people, from all walks of life, and then having a privileged window on the world, on what's happening, on people's behaviors - explains Valenti - People perhaps don't know it, but we newsagents become true confidants, because they come to tell us the most personal things, perhaps unthinkable, and yet we listen and don't comment".
An example: "For example, they tell me about love affairs between seventy- and eighty-year-olds. They tell me everything and, sometimes, I even feel a little embarrassed."
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