Amsterdam, Turkey

I came back home and, in the square next to my house, a group of people were cheering because Galatasaray just won the Turkish football league. This says a lot about the ethnic composition of my neighbourhood.

Povera patria

Did I ever say that I was proud to be an Italian? Well, I was wrong.

The only thought that the majority of my fellow Italians gave their votes to a liar, a crook, someone who pretends to be a libertarian and actually invokes state intervention everywhere (as long as he is the state), makes me sick. And makes me want to stay abroad forever (why not?).

Causes? Many. The control of the media is a big reason. The fact that the opponents are often old, afraid of real innovation, and costantly quarrelling with each other, is another one. So, all in all, the future of my own country is bleak.

I'm dreaming of a white Easter

The winter has been rather mild. After a "promising" December with rigid temperatures, the following months have been not so cold, with temperatures seldom below zero.

December

After a Christmas which hasn't been so white, Easter, which this year is also the third day of spring, is unbelievably cold. It's snowing right now!

Snowfall, a few minutes ago

What will happen to the traditional Easter Monday trip?

Seriously, apart being forced in house, I'm rather enjoying this Easter as a single in Amsterdam (Elisa is in Italy with her family). I can't wait for today's dinner, which will be made by an authentic Sicilian mother!

Sun, oh no!

The company recently moved to a new office. Larger, not cramped, with real meeting rooms. Less central, that's bad. But it could have been much worse.

Windows are large, so there is much light, and being on the top floor also brings a stunning view. I love trains, so it's nice to have the central station so close. Some trainspotting never hurt anyone, did it?

View from my desk

There is something bad, however: the lack of sunscreens at the windows. There is no need for them: Amsterdam's sky is always cloudy, every day of the year, so there's never sun. When there's sun, however, in the afternoon the rays go straight on the PC screens. In order to be able to work, we used a creative solution.

Umbrellas used as sun screen. It's like being at the beach, and you get paid (well, almost like a beach)

This does not happen anymore: now we posted white paper on the windows, so the view is less good, but at least the sun is not so annoying. After a few days, we received a visit from someone at facilities management, saying that said paper could cause windows to explode (!). Now we live in fear that a flood of glass splinters can come to us (not), until facilities management provides proper sunscreens.

Sweet revenge

Last Tuesday I went to the bike repairer in Westermarkt, and tried to tell, in Dutch, that I had left my bike the day before to have it repaired.

The answer was "Could you speak English, please?"

Roles swapped. Eventually.

This says nothing about the quality of my Dutch, however.

And, yes, I went there because my bike had a flat tyre. Just for a change.

Enjoying freedom

The period between yesterday evening and today lunch time deserves a post by itself.

A colleague lives in Utrecht. That's because he met a girl, 2 years ago, who studies there. So, when he joined our company and moved to Holland, a few months ago, the choice of the city was natural.

So, he invited some of the few people who haven't left for Christmas holiday. Those were me and 2 more colleagues living in Amsterdam.

The party went to a Greek restaurant (pretty good, not cheap and not expensive).

Then, Stairway To Heaven, a bar where rock music from 60s to 90s was played, and there was also a dance floor. The walls were covered with guitars, that they claimed had been played by famous rockers. There was also a shirt worn by Kurt Cobain, enclosed in a glass box and venerated as a relic.
Unusual things happened when asking for beer. Once, we got 2 bottles of champagne of beer. This means that we got 2 bottles of beer, but they were 75cl each (!), and they looked like bottles of champagne. Then we asked for 1 beer and we got 8. After telling the waiter we needed 1, he told us to pay 1 and keep the others.
The music was good, and it was also funny to look at the drunken people. A girl with no mobile phone started dancing with us, and later she told us that there is no reality and everything is an impression. Or maybe that didn't happen, it was just an impression.

After the closure, we walked towards the station. The train was leaving in 1 minute, and we needed no less than 10 to get to the platform. And the following train was 1:01 hours later. What now? The guy living in Utrecht offered us to sleep at his place. Good!
We walked for a long way in -2°C and got there. He had the Digitenne TV service, so we told him there was a TV channel he didn't know about. What happened next, in a men-only party, can offend older people, moralists and children, so I won't tell.

I will tell what happened after that. He slept on the sofa, while I and the other 2 shared a double bed. 1 of the other 2 didn't realize he was not sleeping under the duvet, and we were...

Time to wake up. We walked to the Wilhelminapark, see previous post. Then we had a nice breakfast at the Park Café Buiten. Even too much: chocolate pie with whipped cream, apple pie with whipped cream (again), croissant, tea, coffee, wrong coffee.

And eventually we got to Amsterdam again. Time to relax. Or not? No. Some Christmas shopping (not enough), and a visit to the Anne Frank house. First time, after more than 2 years here. Why did I wait for so long? (Because the queue was always terrible, and today it was reasonable, that's why) Really moving, chilling. People who only wanted to live a normal life, and tried in all ways possible to do it. Anne Frank wrote that, after the war, she wanted to become a journalist She did not survive the war, but she did become a writer. Or, simply, she didn't realize what a great writer she already was.

Becoming a Northern European

There are already some symptoms. Maybe they don't mean I'm one yet, but maybe they do.

Summer was dismal, little sun, terrible. September was not too bad. Then, the temperature started decreasing, slowly but steadily. Some days ago, in the night ice was forming.

And, this week, for the first time the city woke up under the snow. It didn't last long, in the afternoon it had disappeared already.

The day after, it snowed again, and it stayed.


And today, I spent an unexpectedly nice morning with three colleagues in Utrecht. Wilhelminapark was covered with snow. Families with children had ice skates at their feet, usual for them (maybe), really weird for me.

And the weirdest thing: I and the colleagues walked on water, like Jesus. Well, in the sense that the pond in Wilhelminapark was frozen, and the ice was thick enough it was possible to walk on it. And skate on it. We walked, Dutch people skated.

Ice was making strange noises, like metal sheets. And we didn't know if that was something to worry about... Dutch people were not worried, and therefore we were not either... We should have been: one of my friends was doing the very last step before reaching the land, when the ice broke. Luckily, he was so close to the shore that he fell on the land.

After that, we were so scared we didn't try again. But children were skating, were playing ice hockey, and one of them was hitting the ice surface with his (her?) hockey club. Those Dutch people are scared by nothing!

Conclusion: I am actually enjoying this chilly weather with no rain! Today was especially good, sun and blue sky. Even though I like snow (maybe because I was born in a place where it never snows), I used to suffer incredibly from cold climate. Now I like it. Is it serious, doctor?

Company pride

The company I work for does quite a lot to build team spirit. A borrel every month (to be precise, not this month, but I didn't come in December 2005 and 2006, so that's not so bad). A summer party in June, a Christmas party in December.

It works. It is probably cheaper than increase salaries :), and the consequence is that people are, on average, very proud to work for our company. It is good for work and life satisfaction.

This year's Christmas party was better than last year's: the fact that I didn't lose my camera contributes to this. The place was not far from the centre. Food, while not exciting, was better: people were not forced to sit at a table, they could walk around, and at least the meat was not dry. Music was pretty nice, not too much house-techno (I hate it), more commercial music. Not many people went to the relaxed places: that's a pity, since the music became loud and it was difficult to talk to people. And, especially, it was nice to meet people, some after a long time, chat with them, and talk about past, present, and future.

This week, all employees got as a gift one of the latest products. A few hours later, Internet sales sites were flooded by such products being offered for sale.

And, on Friday, move time. The office where I worked for more than two years had become too small, with all the new employees. So, movers came, disassembled desks, packed computers, and made the old office almost empty. In the afternoon, since working was not possible, I and some colleagues visited the new office. It made us proud (again). It's big, spacious, and new. And there's a phone for each employee. We will miss the old office in the very centre of the city, the new one is a little further away from the interesting parts. Yet, it could have been much worse, all those dreary industrial estates that look like ghost cities after 18.00 and in weekends would have been depressing.

Lookalikes

I've been told by someone, while I was walking away from the office, that I look like Luis Suarez. I wish it was true...

deep-linked from Wikipedia, license GFDL

Not much else. The only thing that makes me happy is to look at the Serie A standings. If looked upside down, of course.

n8

Saturday last week was n8 day. It was the third onw since I'm here (the first was just 6 days after I arrived), but the first one I took part to.

It is great fun. Many museums are open until 2am, and with one single ticket one can visit them all. Time permitting. Yes, time is the biggest limitation: 7 hours sound like a lot, but, when there are so many museums to visit, they fly. And many people are around, so there can be queues.

My day:

• Rijksmuseum
• Van Gogh Museum (only the temporary exhibition about Barcelona, I had already seen the rest)
• De Appel
• failed attempt to get into the Foam, the queue was too long
• city archive (formerly a bank. The former vault of the bank has still steel doors)
• Stedelijk Museum (only the temporary Warhol exhibition, and not even all of it)
• Hortus Botanicus

And there was much more! But I can be satisfied.

Every cloud has a silver lining

Rain, rain... The more you see it, the more you should get used to it. Instead, all this rain makes me nostalgic of Italy. Not that in Italy it never rains... just not so often. In most years.

There is only one upside of this. There are lots of rainbows, also due to the variability of the weather, meaning that rain can fall and sun can shine in just minutes. Some days ago, a full bow
was visible from my office's window. And today, another rainbow while I was riding my bike (I was riding my bike while it was raining. Am I becoming Dutch?).

Rainbow between ships in Amsterdam harbour

The land of origin

In less than 2 weeks I'll be in Sardinia, to attend to the marriage of my cousin.

The relationship between each person and his/her land of origin is peculiar. There is a sense of affection and pride, which goes beyond reason and causes.

This relationship is even more difficult to tell for people who left their land of origin early. When I'm in Sardinia, I am a stranger. I left it too early. I know no one. I don't know the places, the habits, the dialect. And, yet, I feel at home. And I ask myself: why shouldn't I stay here? Why did I ever leave? And, at the same time, I would probably be uncomfortable if I came back there to stay.

My cousin and her two brothers have been so important to me. One summer, my mother and my brother were in the hospital, having been run over by a car. I spent that summer with my uncle, my aunt and my cousins. And I always felt part of the family. I never felt any difference between the three siblings and me. Nowadays, I visit my cousins whenever I can. My uncle passed away in April this year. He once said that I was his fourth child.

My friend Massimo gets married the same day. Also in Sardinia. There has been tension between us at times, but he is a real friend. He puts commitment in whatever he does, playing fantasy league and helping homeless people. And he once told me that he first got in touch with HTML because he saw me fiddling with it. I am an HTML rookie and he is the webmaster of several sites.

I can live with you and I can live without you

Elisa is going back and forth from Italy to here. Now she's in Italy.

So, how do I feel, all alone in my apartment? Well, strange. I don't miss her when she's not here. Yet, it's not bad either when she's here.

Nec tecum nec sine te vivere possum, I can live neither with you nor without you, is a verse about 2000 years old (maybe by Catullus). In my case, it's the opposite.

So, why did that happen? Elisa taught me a lot, including having more self-confidence, and, in general, the importance of relationships with others. Those helped me to be more happy, whatever happens. In short, Elisa taught me not to need her.

Open questions are: is this a good or a bad thing? And how stable is this going to be? The question to the second answer is: not much. Yet, I don't care, because it is stable right now. It's like the initial scene of La Haine: the narrator tells about a guy who, falling from a tall building, repeats to himself, "So far so good... so far so good". By the way, La Haine is one of the first movies I and Elisa saw together.

Being ill sucks

End of July, I made friends with the Dutch health system. This system is a nice guy, yet I would have preferred not knowing him...

On a Sunday (the day after the first, and so far the last, concert of The Membro's) I go to Zandvoort. Horrible weather, not the day to go to the beach. And I feel a light pain in my back on the left side. Light, but persistent. It's nothing, it's just because I rode a friend on my bike yesterday, yet it doesn't go. I take an aspirin and go to bed.

Monday, I go to work, and the pain is still there, growing stronger as the hours pass. I phone my personal doctor, telling I am strongly considering going to the hospital. She says not to worry and wait. I take an aspirin and go to bed.

At 3.30AM, I wake up. The pain is as strong as ever. I turn in the bed, and it hurts. I turn on the other side, and it hurts more. And, if I lie on my back, it hurts most. Despite being very tired, the pain just does not let me sleep. I cannot stand lying in the bed. So I get dressed, take an umbrella (yes, it's July, but it's raining like hell) and walk. At 4AM I am at the nearest hospital.

They see nothing, even at the X-rays, make me a shot of Diclofenac and send me back home, after prescribing me lots of painkillers and stomach protectors. And they suggest me to have more exams.

The days after, no more pain. The medicines have the side effects to cure the symptoms of the other health problems (cervical arthrosis, excessive stomach acidity), the medical tests say nothing at all.

The only possible explanation the doctor gave is: I had kidney stones, and I successfully expelled them. Yet, there is no certainty.

After a long silence

Why no posts for such a long time? Because blogs are a fashion, and fashions come and go. Or because I found no time. Or because Elisa was in the same room when I was sitting in front of the PC, and a blog is a personal thing (but, if it is so personal, why can everyone read it?).

Anyway, the silence is broken. Time to resume blogging.

(to the people who will read this blog in 3 years, and find that this is still the most recent post: please, don't laugh too hard)

A mistake everyone makes, at some point

Last Sunday I made a mistake. I went to Ikea in Haarlem to buy a piece of furniture.

As this was not enough, I went there without a car. I thought: "There is a railway station there, I just have to walk through the parking lot to the station". I did not think that the object weighed 21 or 23 kg (different signs in different parts of the shop said different things), and that's a lot to carry, even for a few metres. I struggled to the train, I was helped by four kind ladies to put the object in the train, and out of it at the arrival, then I was helped by two girls carry it from the platform to the station's main hall (the two girls missed their train because of this). I was helped by a station worker who collected something I lost and gave it back to me. I went to the bus station outside and it started raining. I thought "Not bad, the box will protect it". The box, being made of cardboard, nearly dissolved when wet: every attempt at moving the box caused a hole in it, and consequent falling off of the content. In the bus, I was helped by a boy who happened to have a roll of sticky tape, and donated it to me. With the sticky tape, it was barely possible to keep the box together in the last metres of my way home.

That was the closest thing to a Mr.Bean sketch that happened to me.

On a different story, yesterday I met my neighbour for the first time. After more than three months, that's a record. She's been very kind, anyway.

Awake all night

Living at a northern latitude has some side effects. In winter, daylight time is shorter. It's something you barely notice: when you stay from 9 to 5 (6, 7...) in an office, you do not really care if it's daylight or not, and, when you come out, the dark sky make you feel you have wasted the entire day in the office. Which is depressing, in Italy and in Holland. Well, you barely notice in the evening, but waking up at 8 am and seeing it's still night is weird, I never experienced such a thing in Italy.

In summer, it's the opposite. These days there is still quite a lot of daylight at 22.00.

So, yesterday a colleague organized a party in a bar in the centre. The occasion was his graduation, his birthday and his new house. Events which happened in different times, but are celebrated only now all at once. He invited quite a lot of friends, who mostly studied in Groningen. Many of them live close to Groningen, that is quite far from Amsterdam, yet they did the journey nevertheless, despite the inconvinient return trip, or the inconvinient night at some friend's home. Dutch people would do anything for some free beer.

The epilogue. I came back home very late, at about 3.30 am, and I ended up going to bed after 4am. And I looked out of the window: there was already some daylight.I stayed awake all night. Well, I slept later (not much, as usual these days), yet it was a really weird experience.

Tolerance?

Yesterday I found some flyers on the stairs. They said, more or less: "Do you suspect that there is a cultivation of hemp in the neighbourhood? Then call the police". The alleged reasons were that home growing of hemp is illegal, it causes danger of fire and it makes neighbourhoods less safe.

Yes, this is the same country where coffeeshops sell hemp. Where the hell do they get it, then?

By the way, the landlady of my previous house had asked me not to grow plants which require constant illumination. But I suspect she was only worried about the electricity bill.

I kissed a celebrity

Last Monday I came back from Italy, where I went to celebrate the fact that Elisa has become a national celebrity. She won one of the 5 L'Oreal scholarships for women in science for Italy in 2007, and therefore she (and the other winners) appeared on the 14th May edition of many national newspapers: La Repubblica on page 28, Corriere della Sera on page 20, La Stampa on page 38 and Il Sole 24 Ore on page 8. That day she even appeared on the national TV news programme, TG1, 20.00 edition (and nobody recorded that. And the archive only archives 24 hours. Anybody has a copy?). At the ceremony, Umberto Veronesi, former Minister of Health and scientific director of the European Institute of Oncology, shook her hand.

To prove that I'm not lying, here are two photos for you to compare.

A promising young scientist, as she appeared on all the main newspapers last Monday

The beauty and the beast last summer in Utrecht

Italy is a nice place, but too many people there think that a Middle Age morale is a good thing. So they struggle in order to deny basic rights to many people, and try to oppose the current law proposal about the agreement between unmarried couples, both hetero and gay. They say that this law would destroy families. In Holland, and even in other Catholic countries such as France or Spain, such agreements exist and they don't destroy families. The Church is really becoming too powerful. That's why I feel so comfortable away from Italy. Then, if Italy eventually progresses, I would be happy, and consider about coming back.

OK, time to stop blogging. I have to cook for two colleagues of mine and their partners, who come here tonight for dinner. One of them is a man married to a man.

Spring, again

It's spring! Since a few days, the weather is far better, there is more light... OK, you can go directly to last year's post, everything is the same.

To celebrate spring, I and some friends went to Keukenhof. The day was wonderful, sunny, and, at certain hours, even warm. And the park had simply gorgeous colours. We left late because I bought one ticket too much, so I had to queue to have it refunded (successfully). The rest was fun. I also took some photos.

Flowers seen from the train

Entrance of the Keukenhof

Cherry trees (maybe)

Windmill inside the park

An Ikea sofa in the middle of the park. Power of sponsorship


An award-winning anthurium (or whatever the name is)

You think I took too many photos? Think that someone else took more than 200!