Rome, Mediterrenean
Organizzatrici di risse interculturali di altissimo livello – Top level intercultural fights organizersArchivio perLife
Springtime
Ladies and gents, it’s with great pleasure that I announce you that an unbelievable number of people ended up on this blog last week searching for ”astracan” on Google, which is pretty scary, because I thought that astracan furs were stuff for 100 year old mummies, so I guess that
1) astracan actually is the “new mink”
or
2) there’s plenty of 100 years old grannies that surf on Google looking for astracan furs.
Anyway there is something in the air today (as Phil Collins would have said) that makes people around me feel happy and makes me feel totally pissed.
- The sun rays transformed my french colleague J- who lately has been a little mellow because her boyfriend lives far away – in some kind of happy happy person that jumps all over the place and listens to happy happy music and speaks with a happy happy voice. I guess that if Teletubbies and Gremlins could couple, the result would sound very much like that.
- As I got in the office after my daily trip to the coffee machine, I found J and my other Tunisian colleague F talking about the names they’re going to give to their kids. Please note that none of them is pregnant. And there I am, starting to think that I’m turning into a man ( and not just a man,actually, I’d better say I’m turning in a NERD).
This kid thing is starting to upset me. Last night I went with some friends to some other friend’s house. She lives with her husband and their one year old son right in front of Colosseum in an ancient, awesome apartment. As I stood like an ass staring at the picture, I found myself telling ( pretty aloud): gee. this house is awesome. Too bad that all that childish stuff spread everywhere hides the parquet.
Maybe I’m tuned on the Southern Hemisphere, so for me it’s almost autumn. Should check if when I flush the toilet water goes down clockwise.
Stargate
In the last few months I’ve been having the strong impression that, somewhere in Rome, a Stargate must have been unlocked allowing freaks from other galaxies to reach our planet. In the next days I’ll try to provide you a list of my favourite aliens.
The Astracan Grannies (furwearingus mummys) : if you pay attention, you’ll notice that streets, markets and buses have been invaded by these creepy creatures. They’re not very dangerous unless you don’t become an obstacle to their only task, which is to carry all day long heavy flowerpower shoppers from a side to the other of town. Anyway, it’s very easy to spot them if you know that:
- they all are 1.40 mts tall
- they all wear astracan fur coats. Astracan is a kind of mythological sheep with a curly and shiny fur, that is now extinguished (a little like dodos) because in 1920’s someone decided it was “the new mink” and not even the WWF was able to contrast nowadays grannies will to be à la mode.
- they wear last generation sneakers.
- since their only goal is to bring mysterious shoppers all around the town, you can often find them in the subway or on the bus. Now, when I told you they aren’t dangerous, I also added that they aren’t dangerous unless they don’t perceive you as an obstacle. For example, if you didn’t notice one of them has got on your same bus and you walk towards the only free seat, they could even punch you in the face or throw you out of the bus in order to win the seat.
Is everything falling apart or did I cross the Stargate?
Sometimes it happens that I feel all day long as I had walked on a dog poo with my brand new ( ways too expensive for my budget) shoes. Dunno if you recognize the sensation of being in a world that looks exactly like yours, but where everything is a little more annoying than usual not to be noticed. The feeling I’m talking about is the one you experience when you listen to the news, and there is not even the littlest “who cares” news to laugh about. It’s when the hugest woman you’ve ever seen stands right in front of the bus door and doesn’t let you out, so you miss your stop and get to the office too late to drink a coffee before starting a working day. It’s when someone you really love says something you didn’t expect from him/her, not something really unpleasent, but still. It’s when you start looking at yourself struggling in the world from the outside, as you were in a ’60s videogame or in a candid camera. It’s when your laugh stretches a little too much towards a sigh. You cannot really complain about all this, because people starve and die everyday, but still you know it’s a pain in the ass. Maybe the world is falling apart. Maybe apocalypse it’s coming. Maybe it’s only that my periods are about to come.
Geee
God, I’m tired.
Bad thing about this job, is that there are periods ( not too many, by the way) in which we’re really relaxed, and easy. We can take our time, do a little gossip, have a smoke on the balcony, go grab a coffee, chat a little with our boyfriends on the phone, whatch silly videos on YouTube. And then, all of a sudden, there are days like today. Even if this morning the universe tried to suggest me that I’d better stay home ( while I ws waiting for the bus, a car passed by and splashed a mud puddle on my awesome snow white skirt) when I walked into the office, I felt great. Now I look like I got run over an elephant and the mud staines on my skirt are the cutest thing about me. My hair is puffier than usual, my eyes look like the Simpson’s and I have a Rain-man posture. I think that young, beautiful and smart girls who spend all their day staring at logo on a screen, while talking at the same time with the graphic artist who made it ( and who was my best friend till today, don’t think he’s going to talk to me ever again after I made him change his project ten thousands times and ruined his day), with our Communication Projects responsible ( who couple of times vanished because her brand new apartment got fleed by dunnowhat), and with an algerian guy whose thoughts I couldn’t understand because I do not understand French before 12.00 a.m. , should be protected by WWF, or UNESCO or something like that.
Now I’m kind of worry. I mean, after the first months of enthusiasm, I’m now realizing that I’ve never been to the supermarket, that basically i don’t have a social life and that Devil Wears Prada protagonist can kiss my ass.
Gotta do something about that.
I’ll make a list. Lists are always helpful:
- Go to the supermarket and buy something healthful, like soy, juices and also something that can cheer me up, like cookies and chocolate. Maybe I’ll grab a beer or two as well.
- Wash my clothes before the only clean stuff to put on will be my bikini.
- Buy a socket for my hairdryer, drying my hair on the heater isn’t very nice. In the end I always have burns on my forhead.
- …
Fine, gotta go. My new, organised life is starting now.
New Year’s Eve – Day 3
Whoo, just got back from the weirdest new year’s eve party of my entire life. As I already said, we couldn’t find a restaurant healthy enough to have a traditional new year’s eve supper, so we just wallked a little around Plaza Real, at last resigned to have just a little jamon ( ham) and a beer, but it soon became clear that it would be a mission as impossible as Tom Cruise’s when he gets hung upisde down like a jamon in some caveau. In the end, as a lighthouse in the cold Spanish night, there it was a small rotisserie called El Rey del Pimiento (Plaza Puerta Cerrada, 4 – Madrid) that lookd open and lively and we hurred inside. As you can see from the pictures above, the place could easily have been the set of The Lord of the Rings, as it was populated by the Spanish Freaks Association and its decor could leave without words even the leader of Kitsch Fanatics Worldwide.
After five minutes, Fulvio had already become waiter Mario’s best friend, while my mother got a little freaked out because of the smoke of cigarettes that occluded the possibility of seeing what we were eating ( croquetas!!!). My sister ( unbelievably still not whining) and I just kept singing our Give me hope remix, hoping some miracle to come and resolve the situation. The miracle came, and was sangria carafe shaped. After that my memories are a little foggy, all I remember is:
- us walking out the Pimiento place giggling
- us buying from the cutest chinese guy three little bags with 12 berries of grape each, to be swallowed at midnight in Puerta del Sol square, together with a bottle of champagne.
- us completely lost in the colorful crowd of Puerta del Sol
- me getting almost choked while trying to eat a berry for each toll of the clock at midnight.
Happy New Year to all of you, folks.
11.15 pm (Sangria Especial)
11.45 pm ( Puerta del Sol)
Nochevieja Madrilena – Day 2
Day 2 – December 31st, 02.00 pm
Well, I’m exhausted. This morning we went out aiming to increase our cultural level by visiting El Prado and Reina Sofia museums and thus to close 2007 a little more cultivated, but the cosmic energy must have decided that we’re cultivated enough, as you can see in the picture below that well summarizes our cultural morning trip in Madrid.
This is it: last day of the year Spanish think they had enough and just don’t go to work. We wandered for three hours ( following beloved Lonely Planet, mother keeping askin: almost there? almost there? almost there?) looking for something – anything - to see: El Prado was closed, Reina Sofia Art Center was closed, Royal Palace was closed, shops were closed, my feet were hacking and my stomach was starting to digest me from the inside. We decided it could be a good idea to have a little rest in a super nice quarter, called Chueca, have lunch and then decide what to do. Of course we didn’t tell Fulvio Chueca is Madrid gay quarter, so I think he is still convinced Spanish people are just friendly with Italian wine bar owners. We got into a very nice Cervezeria, and that was the best idea of the morning, cause, since it was a Cervezeria, it didn’t have a wine list that Fulvio can memorize, so it took only five minutes to ask for ( guess what?) cerveza y croquetas ( my liver is very much mad at me) and our first Italian-tasting coffee ( Italian espresso in Spanish = cafe solo, I know that because the waitress was from Brindisi ( 40 km from my home town) so we could ask her the meanings of the dishes in the list, but I had the impression she didn’t understand them neither).
Culturally enriching information: Fulvio, who must have lived in Spain when he was younger ( dunno for sure, his past is a little foggy) explained us that the dirt on the floors of every cervezeria, restaurant and wine bar we’d been in, is proportional to the fame of the place. It’s pretty easy, actually: lot of success= lot of people = lot of dirt on the floor. Now I understand why I saw couple of times waiters throwing waste on the floor. That was marketing. Cool.
After a little tour to the Atocha train station ( the one in wich there was the terrositic attack on March 11th 2004), that has now become an indoor rainforest ( you could expect a monkey to pickpocket you all of a sudden), we started looking for a restaurant to greet the Last Day of the Year from. It’s useless to tell you that the same philosophy that made Spanish people decide to have a rest in the very only day we were there was applied to restaurants, bars, bistrots, cervezerias and post houses the Lonely Planet suggested, and the few ones that were open ( we didn’t miss any of them…almost there? almost there? almost there?) of course had something that made my mother change her mind about ten thousand times. There you are a list:
- Cheap menu
- Cheap restaurant
- Cheap table place in nice restaurant
- Unappealing waitress
- Don’t like the way the barman was staring at my sister
- Don’t like the material the tables are made of
- Don’t like the way the table is set
- Don’t understand the menu
In the end none of the place we visited was good, and we went back to the hotel a little concerned about our destiny ( Mother in a nihilistic attitude, Fulvio not caring about it, Sister and I singing at the top of our lungs a remixed version of Give me hope, Joana and Feliz Navidad). On the way to the hotel, we had a little tour in El Corte Inglés, a huge Galeries Lafayette and Harrod’s looking shopping center, that was surprisingly open.
Now, as I told you, I care very much about signs. If this last day of 2007 is a metaphore of the old year that is coming to an end, well, there are a few word to describe it:
- feet ache
- useless wandering
- nerves increasing
Hope the next one will be just a little better ( at least no more feet ache).
Nochevieja Madrilena – Day 1
Day 1 – December 30th 2007, 5 a.m.
We’re going to Madrid for the New Year’s Eve. Since we had to leave at 5 a.m. from Bari airport, I thought it was useless to go to sleep and decided to stay up till 4 with my friends and then go and wake my family up. Look at my face and guess who had the crappiest idea on earth.
So, there we are, ready to go, each one of us bringing those things that couldn’t absolutely be left at home:
Me: camera and cigarettes
Mother: Lonely Planet guide
Fulvio: himself and cigarettes
Sister: life size ugly disney cartoon monster ( boyfriend’s present…looks like we are going to share the bed, the monster, my sister and I) , two ( two !!!) albums of pictures of her boyfriend and her ( Is she afraid to forget the face of her boyfriend during the neverending three days lasting trip ?)
The reason why we had to leave at 5 am is that to go to Madrid straight from Bari we reserved seats on a charter flight.
Charter: special flight that is scheduled when lots of people from the same town go to the same place in particular periods, like Christmas or summer holidays.
Charters from Bari: more or less the same thing but with some slight differences:
1) People from Bari only move in hordes, so the avarage leaving family includes: Mother, Father, three or four ( or five) overweight kids ( if older than 15, you have to add the respective boyfriends and grilfriends), the octogenarian granny ( that the rest of the family always forgets on the plane since it’s too concentrated in remembering the duty free bag) and some more relatives and friends. Leggi il seguito di questo post »
So that was Christmas…now, what’s next?
Well, Christmas is over, Santa brought us a new heating system, the penguins left my bedroom and I’m now approaching a new critical period of these holidays: getting started for the New Years Eve trip to Madrid with my crazy, crazy family.
Partecipants: Me, Mother, Mother Fiancè (Fulvio) and Little Sister ( Cristina).
Activities:
Me: I packed my camera, a pair of blue jeans, couple of sweater and some hideous red strings for the 31st midnight ( fine, I’m superstitious…so what?Anyway, since my boyfriend will be faaaaaaaaar away, no one will see it anyway)
Mother: since she’s a virgo ( like me, actually, but I must have some crappy ascendant, maybe llama, or goat, in fact I’m ways less organised than she is) she bought the ultimate Madrid guide ( bible-sized, weights a ton and a half, includes the detailed description of every single street, square, stone and inhabitant in town and in the neighborhoods) and has already started drawing complex itineraries with the aim of making us visit the whole town in three days. I bet that, if she could, she would also rent some bulls to free in the streets like in Pamplona to make us walk faster…crap, I wouldn’t have write this, now I gave her a great idea….
Fulvio: I’m pretty worried about him, think he got pinched by some tsetse fly because, as he sits no matter where, he falls asleep…maybe he’s narcoleptic, dunno.
Cristina: she’s been gargling for three days, in order to get her voice ready to annoy us with a list of complainings ( I saw her writing it: I’m angry, I’m thirsty, I’m tired, I miss my boyfriend, this place sucks, the paeilla sucks, it’s too cold, it’s too hot, the sky is too blue and Madrid is too Spanish, just to name a few).
Wish me luck.
