Rome, Mediterrenean
Organizzatrici di risse interculturali di altissimo livello – Top level intercultural fights organizersArchivio perPeople
J’aime Paris, Chapter II – To Delhi and back
When you think about Paris, first thing that comes into your mind is of course the Eiffel Tower, but the second one should be a flock of couples almost making out all around. Well, you’re not that wrong. Paris is the Sweethearts Capital, but it can also be much more than this. Last weekend M and I went to Paris at our friend C’s and, even if we’d already been in the Ville Lumiere more than once, it had been able to surprise us as if it was a completely different town we were visiting.
C. lives close to Place de la Republique, and I couldn’t imagine a better neighbourhood for him to live in, as he – who’s in love with the Arab world, or, at least, with the Arab food, the Arab tobacco in the Arab pipe and, of course, the Arab women – can find there many kebab restaurants ( the smoke coming from the windows smelle greasy enough, but I wouldn’t swear that the brown stuff turning round and round was actual lamb meat …well, only the braves…) and even a Hammam, a Turkish Bath, to spend the afternoons at ( unless you don’t like mushrooms…neither to drink nor under your feet).
Saturday morning we met P for breakfast ( trip tip: if you’re Italian and you can’t start your morning without an espresso, you’d better ask for a café serré, or you’ll end up depressed, forcing yourself to sip dirty hot water from a huge cup, that will automatically lead you to the closest toilet to eject what you’ve just ingested…let’s consider it some kind of natural colonscopy ). P is a handsome, smart middle-aged man with an astonishing predisposition for foreign languages, and he entertained us with jokes in German and Greek as we relaxed in a small café, lazily staring at a mill-run that made the whole scene look as if it was settled in Amsterdam. When one of the waiters started to fight with the clochard that has permanently settled in the cute, fancy kiosk right in front C’s apartment, we decided it was time to go, so we left Amsterdam and headed towards Paris Indian quarter.
P brought us in a super weird roofed street, where we walked for a while taking thousands of pictures to carnival suites shops and to huge papier-maché Indian elephants. There were also many Afro hairdressers, and grocers that sold varieties of fruit we couldn’t recognise, and the everything looked and smelled of India in such a way that you could expect a baboon jumping on your head all of a sudden.
Regardlessly to our stomach we asked for some original French Tandoori chicken and basmati rice, while a young guy tried some scarves on in the shop en face, jiggling as P gave him suggestion to the colour that better suited him.
Life can be a mess, but if you are in Paris, you don’t care.
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.
No comment – exploitation @ Beirouth
We keep thinking the small, comfy world we live in it’s the worst world ever. We keep dreaming of a place in which there is no unemployement, no old politicians minding their own business, no lousy TV programs. If we don’t like ourselves we could always say it’s our small world’s fault. Couple months ago I met Lelia. She’a a pretty, smart and very young Lebanese journalist. We became friends, and that surprised me in the beginning, cause I’d never thought I could feel someone, that was born so far away from me and my culture, so close to me. She’s the coordinator of NewsLab blog, a 20 women from the Mediterranean blog, and we all daily keep in touch through a newsgroup. Two days ago we received this e-mail.
“C’est vers 16h 45 que le bruit de l’explosion a retentit a Beyrouth, alors que j’etais chez moi. Les premieres informations font etat de 3 morts et plus de 10 blesses, et apparemment c’est un convoi de l’ambassade americaine qui a ete visee par l’explosion. La porte-parole de l’ambassade US a cependant refuse de confirmer a l’heure qu’il est ces informations. Les photos ne sont pas encore disponibles, et je n’ai pas acces au blog, postez ce texte pour moi, merci”
It’s hard to understand. I mean, I go nuts if I don’t have my superfast internet connection, if people in the subway stomp on my feet, if there are no Vanity Fair issues left to buy. Maybe our small, comfy world isn’t that bad.
Things will never be the same again
French Italian Team swimmer Laure Manadou: “With Luca Marin ( swimmer as well, same team) is over because he was jealous”.
Now, I’m not that much into sport gossip but I’ve been having enough about these two sweethearts since the very beginning of their relationship. I mean, it was also kind of entertaining in the beginning (first five minutes), with the French girl and the Italian boy belonging to opposite teams and then falling in love, an example that Italian and French folks do not necessarily interact hitting each other with the head. Yeah, it was nice hearing of Laure moving to Italy to stay closer to Luca and to see them fighting against evil and annoying newspapers ( I’m sure that when Laure started to draw the name of his lover and silly hearts on her palms to be shown at the end of competitions she didn’t know at all there would be flocks of cameramen and photographers waiting for her…yeah, right). And then came the storm. Vocal fights, mediatic fights, engagement rings thrown all over the place ( and hitting poor unaware italian swimmer Magnini in the face while doing it). And now this last, interesting declaration.
Poor Laure, I can’t really see why that stupid Luca boy was so jealous…in the end, what has she done to make him being so jealous?
Did she by any chance model for some hard pictures, showing worldwide how does a swimmer look like under the swimming suit?
Did – by any chance – she start to go out with some Stalius ( Stalius?) French swimmer a week after the end of her love story with Luca? Well, yes she did.
Most of all, beside the visibility this kind of events give to sports that are often dismissed - which is really unfair, according to me, since there is so much more athletic dignity in a swimmer than in a soccer player whose primary vexation concerns getting a new haircut - why do we care about that?
Elizabeth II, hi-tech queen
Yesterday I read my first 2008 newspaper and get back into breaking news after ten Media free days ( my mother believes TV is evil so we’ve never had it at home…I’m not sure she’s that wrong). The news I loved most was about Queen Elizabeth ( 81 years old) playing with the ultimate Nintendo Wii Playstation. Now, couple of observations about that.
1) I think hi-tech grannies are super cute, but according to me they also look a little weird, like the guy at the post office who has the hairiest face but never forgets to put on his sparkling eye shadow. I mean, you’ve been living for a hundred years, you’ve seen wars, you’re the queen of England…no one wants you to be also hi-tech. Queens aren’t hi – tech. Queens wear hideous pale pink hats and drink tea.
2) The Wii Elizabeth was playing with was actually Kate Middleton’s Christmas present to William and I’ve never seen a granny stealing her nephew’s Christmas present to use it herself.
3) Now, I could change my mind about hi tech grannies if, at least, the game she played was some very rock n roll game…dunno…Resident Evil or Tomb Raider…something with loads of zombies, a little splatter, a little kinky…dunno. Not at all. She used Ultimate Playstation Wii to play bowling. What? Why? This is not being hi-tech, this is being lazy!
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 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 »
Stop the clash of civilizations…
Besides….
this blog is about dialogue, about the hope that speaking, sharing, confronting our lives to the ones of others, who live just a step away, can change something…just a little…this is my Christmas wish
