spring feelings

March 21st.
First day of spring.
Blossoms, sunshine and a clear sky.
Pictures of you, The Cure.
Shy daffodils come out. Nature wakes up and makes everyone feel so light and soft.
It's the start of a new life, of something beautiful, again.

stealing toilets

I still have to get used to live in a peaceful and safe country.

It does not seem real to drive in a smooth, silent and gentle traffic.

When I'm in the metro stations I still have the natural instinct of checking my purse to be sure that my wallet is still there.

Today I was at the supermarket and I had to take the shopping cart. Automatically, I put just 50 cents in it. Why? Of course, because if somebody "stole" it, I would have lost just 50 cents and not 2 euros. Then I realized I don't live in Italy anymore. Nobody here steals shopping carts. But if I was in Italy, my precaution would have probably been right.

In fact, somebody steals even TOILETS! It happened in the metro stations of Naples. People dressed up as plumbers were staging a sort of Oceans Eleven in order to steal toilet bowls. I'm just wondering: what did they do with the plunder?

some crumbs of the journey

Despite the anxiety of my grandma, we made it.

The car reminded those fully loaded lorries that travel from Sicily to Lombardy with all sorts of mediterranean delicacies. However, when looking inside the car, instead of spotting oranges and tangerines, you could see huge transparent plastic bags, saying "SERVIZIO IGIENE URBANA, RACCOLTA SECCO*" full of underpants, socks and other underwear material.

After getting away from the italian cahotic traffic and from the german smooth mororways, we shored in the lovely fairy land that is Denmark for a couple of bucolic moments. There, we stopped in a town whose name made us think somehow of a candy and, with a lot of expectations, we tried to find a place for lunch. Of course we found just a greek pizzeria and an irish pub. Same amount of good luck in Stockholm, while waiting for the ship. The only places open for lunch were a kebab-pizza fast food and a fake japanese sushi bar.

And of course, once in Helsinki, we had a good dish of Italian pasta ;)

* I didn't have any better bag than those huge garbage ones for the "dry waste"