Luglio milanese

Ciao tutti,

It's time for another update and this one is going to be about people and how to spend a Milanese July. You see, it's hot, hothothothothothot, and I love it. So what if I can't seem to dry up all day? So what if I'm never presentable to clients anymore? So what if nobody really wants to take English classes and I consequently don't get to work much? It's summer and I'm in Italy. We've got clear blue skies, there's not a cloud in sight and the temperature is stable around 30 degrees Celsius. I've got enough time on my hands to go swimming, to lie and the park and read Homer (well actually, I haven't done that yet but I am planning to!) and get that suntan I so desperately want.

Work is all but finished. All courses that won't continue in September have ended by now and I have been substituting a bit to earn some extra cash but it definitely isn't a full-time job anymore. Which means I have loads of time to enjoy visitors and exactly those visitors are going to be the subject of the largest part of this post! Steef and Marieke finally arrived many hours later than planned but that didn't matter. We had been really excited and very proud to announce to them that the July sales would start that weekend which made us very happy to hit town on Sunday only to find out that... the sales wouldn't start until the Saturday after that! That was a bit of a disappointment but in the end we decided not to let this discourage us and to continue with our shop-a-thon as planned. I actually bought a lovely shirt to wear at Maartje and Edin's wedding in September (when Steef and I are going to be bridesmaid and pageboy, so we had to make sure we bought matching outfits) and another one for the summer at Zara. And it was a good thing I didn't wait until the sales started, because by the time I got to Zara the following weekend they were completely sold out!

It was Steef's second visit and Marieke's first so we also did some sightseeing. Evenings were filled with dinners at La Padellaccia and Mas and many, many games (I love Skip-Bo!). On Monday the three of us took the train to Como when Olaf had to work in order to join the sunshine from the lake but unfortunately it was cloudy and rained a little. Well, no harm done, because we had a lot of time to talk and catch up which was at least as important as Como. Here are some pictures.

Me and Marieke on the couch at home

Me and Steef

Marieke has such an amazing smile that we even look cute in black and white
I think Steef and I were pretending to be couple... so you can imagine the merriment!

The weekend after that my father came with his Barbershop quartet. Once every year the go to a random town to sing on street corners and see of they can earn some cash. And this year it was Milano, baby! They sang at the Galleria, in front of the Duomo, on Piazza Mercanti, inside the Castello and earned an amazing amount of 8 euros. It was a very lovely visit and I liked his friends a lot, even though I had been a bit worried about spending the weekend with 50 to 60-year-old men! We had some lovely food in the evenings and enjoyed the occasional bottle of wine...

And we also shot some little movies, here's an example

That Sunday there was a free concert at Piazza Duomo. We got to enjoy an interesting mix of Vivaldi's and Piazzolla's Four Seasons (both compositions were cut in parts and the seasons were paired together to emphasise contrast), while dying of mosquito bites and trying to soothe the pain with way to expensive bottles of beer...

That weekend the sales started but I didn't buy anything except for a pair of flip flops. That Wednesday it was notte bianca (when all the shops are open), but that didn't really yield any other positive shop results either. This weekend, Werner and José came to visit and they were well-prepared. They had studied nearly every single guide about Milan in existence and were able to tell me loads of things I didn't know yet. So, of course we had to go and discover. They didn't need much sleep so we spent two long days in the city meticulously investigating the Duomo (2,5 hours in total), the museum of Milanese architectural history through the ages in the Castello, Cimitero Monumentale, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana (where I had never been before), a bunch of churches and of course just walking around. It's always fun to have study mates around and being to indulge in those useless interests we were crazy enough to study for all those years. The nights were filled with the usual dinners at La Padellaccia, Mas and Wasabi (sushi aperitivo) and many games I should have won but didn't. Saturday night we went to another free concert at Piazza Duomo. This time it was Giovanni Allevi, a very gifted Italian piano player whose music was able to keep a square filled with smart-mouthed Italians silent... Here are some pictures of Werner and Jo

Aren't they cute? They are convinced they never look good on pictures but I must disagree!

This morning, the took a train to Bologna and are planning to camp their way back via Florence, Pisa and Lucca. Good luck, kids, may the force be with you! When they had left, I was feeling fat and lazy so I decided it was time for a work-out and I went to the pool. Of course, I was really tired and made a little mistake. Even though I was tired, I finished my routine in good time and to reward myself I allowed myself some time in the sun to work on my tan. So I took off my cap and goggles, put them in my locker, closed it and went outside. After I had been lying there for a while, I started thinking about going home and getting my things. And then I realised that the keys to the locker were still attached to my goggles! So there I was, standing in my swimsuit without access to my things! After fidgeting with the lock for a while I decided to cut my losses and do the shameful but right thing. I told the lifeguard what had happened and with a compassionate look he got his pair of 2-meter tongs. With an excruciatingly loud sound he cracked my lock in two, gave me a deservedly sarcastic smile and walked off carelessly swinging the tongs over his shoulder. I couldn't help thinking that he must do this at least 15 times a day... Who designs a lock you can close without a key, anyway?!

A presto, Fe

Home is where the heart is

Ciao ciao,

Here I am again. I didn't have time to post anything during the heavy week I was telling you about - because it was crazy! - and after that I went to Nijmegen for the weekend. This was actually not as easy as it sounded, because the asshole Italians had of course planned an air traffic controllers strike on Monday and I couldn't afford to come back later as I get paid by the hour (the first available flight after that would have been on Thursday). I was quite close to crying that Friday afternoon, because I was really looking forward to seeing my friends and family again - and I was really tired from the week, which didn't make me feel strong, confident or decisive at all! I looked for some other weekends I could postpone my visit to, but, alas!, every Monday had the same problem. Seriously, why don't those evil Italians just realise that - even though I support the workers right to strike - enough is enough! You don't have to go on strike every two weeks to be taken seriously. And if you do, and you're not taken seriously, just give it up! Anyway, after a lot of deliberation and some tears, Olaf found a train I could take on Monday morning, which would cost me quite a lot of money (although of course not as much as missing all those lessons) but at least it would ensure my return to Italy on Monday. So, I went anyway.

And it was great. I am so glad that I went! I had been experiencing something a good friend of mine described as the expat's wives' syndrome. Apparently, it's quite common for partners of expats to get a backlash between 6 and 9 months after leaving their country to be with their partners. And although I am not the average expat wife - they are generally blond bimbo's who have absolutely nothing to do besides shopping and going to the gym and who don't have any friends except for other expat wives because they don't speak Italian (trust me, I've seen them!), whereas as I have a job, don't go to the gym, hardly ever go shopping, speak Italian and don't know any expat wives - I did come to Italy to be with Olaf. For those of you thinking I forgot one important difference between me and the average expat wives, yes, I realise that I am not a woman... it just seemed to 'duh' to mention. Well, to cut a long story short, I had been experiencing some doubts and had been wondering about whether or not I had made the right choice, whether or not I was happy here and whether or not I felt at home. The conclusion to the last question was that I do feel at home here in Milan and in our apartment and could definitely not go back to Nijmegen now, but that I do feel lonely here sometimes. The main reasons for this are that I usually don't feel very sociable after a full day of listening to students talk about whatever subjects they like and pretending to be interested in order to stimulate them to continue and that we usually have visitors every weekend. This means that I don't have a lot of time to make friends here and build on relationships. And when the only real friend I had made, Belinda, told me she was leaving to Belgium with her new husband, something snapped inside me and I started feeling really bad and alone. This situation has been resolved now but was the cause of some heavy weeks and some tensions between me and Olaf. But fortunately, we can talk about anything and when I finally mustered the courage to talk to him about it, we spent a night talking and crying. But that night helped a lot. The most important reason I felt so bad was that I kept it inside and didn't speak to him about it. Just talking about it was a load off my mind.

So, my trip to Holland was very important to me. When I went I expected to find a place I didn't belong anymore, which I hoped would make me realise Milan is definitely my home now. But the reality couldn't have been further from the truth. Nothing has changed, nothing at all. Of course, people have grown older a little, some of them have changed jobs, others have graduated in the mean time or are in the process of graduating, but in general the people there were still pretty much as they had been when I left. I felt very welcome and part of the different 'groups' again (my family, for instance, or my study mates). This disturbed me a bit the last time I went to Holland, but this visit it was different. The familiarity, openness and easy acceptance gave me confidence and fortified me. It felt like everybody was unconsciously saying that, if I ever decide I want to come back, I won't have to start all over again but that we can just pick up where we left off. This felt good, because I did feel bad about leaving a lot of people like that. I've always liked being the shoulder to cry on and being easy to talk to - oh yes, I reckoned myself to be the perfect little psychologist! - and found it difficult to leave especially those people who were going through some rough times. I mean, I don't delude myself that I'm more than I am, but I've always wanted to be there for people and to try to help them as best as I could, even if all I could do was listen. And the familiarity was extended even this far, people still weren't afraid to tell me what was bothering them or just to cry. Thank you for still wanting to share your life with me, even though I left you quite suddenly in pursuit of my own goals! But during this year, I've come to accept that people will always have problems and that it's not my responsibility to solve everything even though I might want to - and trust me, that's an important realisation for someone as self-centered as me! So this time, it was easier to leave. And even though this trip didn't have the expected result at all, it was good in a completely different way. My doubts are over and the knowledge that Nijmegen could easily be home again has given me my choice back. And after careful consideration, it turns out that I'm happy with the choice I have made and don't feel like changing it.

So, I came back and went back to work, which was just the same boring stuff - boring to speak about, obviously, not to do. Belinda left for Kortrijk on Tuesday, only to return by car with Enrico on Thursday to move their stuff. So we went out for bye-bye drinks with them on Thursday night. This was fun and didn't last long - as we both had an early start on Friday - but unfortunately it ended badly. Belinda's purse was stolen from underneath her chair and this freaked her out because she thought her passport was in there. She's South African and has only just gotten her permesso di soggiorno based on her marriage to Enrico, but without a passport she wouldn't have been able to leave the country and go to her new home in Belgium. Fortunately, the passport turned out to be in their apartment and she's just missing some replaceable stuff.

My sister Mignon and her boyfriend Sander had already arrived on Wednesday for a long weekend. They wanted and needed some time to themselves at first so they spent two nights together in a hotel. This was the only way we could have done it because Italians don't celebrate Ascension Day (seriously, they celebrate these really weird Christian holidays nobody in the Netherlands has ever even heard of but they just ignore Ascension Day?!) and we had to work on Thursday and Friday. And we've agreed not to have visitors outside of the weekend because it takes up to much time and energy and our (mainly my) work suffers from it. So they got their time together and we got the time to work. I finished really early on Friday and went to get them at their hotel. And it was lovely. Because they had already walked around town on Thursday and had seen a lot of the sights, we could spend a significant part of Friday just lying in the park catching up, chatting and gossiping. Our nights were filled with food at Mas and La Padellaccia, booze and games, games, games, as we obviously had to introduce them to Cafe International...

On Saturday, we went to Como and had a look around this gorgeous place, which wasn't packed with tourists yet as it is still low season. We walked along the lake shore, admired the local Duomo and traversed the lake by pedalo (or "pedalò" in Italian and "waterfiets" in Dutch) where we indulged in some childish fun. We had a lovely time and unfortunately they had to leave again today because tomorrow's just another working day. So they left and we cleaned the house... And now we've got the evening to ourselves. So I'm going to leave you now with a cordial goodbye and some pictures.

Just look at that cute couple!

Me tough helmsman!

Captain Olaf

First mate Sander

Mignonneke is a quite a dish, isn't she?

For more pictures and some interesting home movies, see Olaf's web album: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/ojdegroot/Como190507.

Ciao, Fe