Real men ride mopeds

Hallo! Or should I say ciao?

I spent a three day weekend in Sicily two weeks ago, eating copious amounts of gelato and pizza, and I’m still fighting off the urge to say grazie and prego. Italian is so animated and over the top, and so much fun. 

However, even in Sicily, I couldn’t escape my affinity for all things Dutch. I stayed at a hostel with a communal kitchen, and that is where I met Ronald.

Ronald is Dutch, and he is so typically Dutch that I could never mistake him for any other nationality. We bonded over breakfast in the kitchen (he always lit little candles, saying he likes candlelight at breakfast) every morning, talking about the NBA (he used to watch in the 1990’s, when I was neither living in America nor interested in basketball, so it was pretty tough going holding a conversation about that). He made me tea and opened my little pear juice bottles every morning for me.

He popped his head into my room at 1 a.m. to ask me and my roommate is we wanted to go out for a drink. I was already in my pajamas. Seriously, the guy was in his mid-thirties. I hope that when I’m in my mid-thirties I’m still cool enough to go out at one in the morning.

Anyways, total gent. Sharing an apartment with a stranger is a little weird, but he was a very, very nice guy. And funny, though maybe not intentionally.

When I asked him what he was doing in Sicily, he told me – not kidding – that he was “going out into the wild”. I laughed nervously and told him we were sitting smack dab in the middle of city center in Trapani. That’s when he announced his plan to buy some gear, hop a boat to Sardinia and disappear into the wilderness to eat berries and kill wild boar for a week.

This plan was, apparently, a long time coming. As a teenager, he bought a gun and planned to come to America, to Yosemite, to hunt animals and live off the land. I tried to explain to him that Yosemite is basically overrun with tourists, but he didn’t believe me.

Ronald (or Ronaldo, as I called him) was supposed to be gone off into the wild for two weeks, and time is up. I haven’t heard any news reports of Dutch hikers being killed by wild animals or starving to death, so I’m assuming all went well.  

Also, Italians really dig blondes. Especially on Sicily, where most are quite dark, blonde travelers get treated like princesses. I thought it was just a figment of my imagination that everyone was being incredibly nice to me, but a friend who studied in Bologna tells me that it’s a common phenomenon. There was a lot of “si bella!” as I walked by. I don’t speak Italian, but I know what that means.

For example, on the Egadi Islands (google image that, it’s beautiful), I was sitting on some rocks in the water, and this precious little Italian Casanova explained to me that he is learning English in school, and that his English “was no so good, but in fourth level will be better”. He also said that he was sorry to bother me; but that I was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen (being the only blonde for miles around really strokes your ego.) He might have been ten or eleven, and he was nervous out of his mind to talk to me.

So, in conclusion, I thought everyone was great on Sicily, although it’s apparently run by the Sicilian Mafia. They run around on mopeds in packs which really makes them seem a little ludicrous to someone who associates the mob with, well, The Godfather. Guys will drive on their mopeds past girls and speed up and pop wheelies and making cute little roaring engine sounds (as a girl who's been in many a pick-up truck, I am not impressed). But hey. They're mafia. I guess that badassery balances out the sissyness I associate with riding a moped. 

 

Loud and proud

I miss singing. A lot. I have this crazy Dutch lady living in the apartment beneath me and she calls our landlord to complain about the noise we’re making… at three in the afternoon when we’re all at work. We had to put carpet all throughout our apartment because our high heels in the morning before we go to work bother her.

I’ve never gone so long without singing. I sing every day. I have since I was a little girl. Even when I’ve been in hours of rehearsal and I think my vocal chords hate me and they’re going to shrivel up and die just to spite me, I catch myself singing along the radio in the car or humming Vaughn Williams as I do my homework.

I can’t sing in my apartment, so I tried to find an alternate location. I tried the beach. But it’s so windy and cold that it hurts my throat and I can barely hear myself over the surf.

Then, I looked to the Dutch. They sing in the most peculiarly public places. Shopping? Random Dutch lady browsing the racks and singing along the EuroPop on the radio. Grocers? There too. On their bicycles as they bike to work/school/a bar/everywhere? Oh, yes. All the time. It’s like they make their own little car radio on their bikes. They even sing duets with random other cyclists in the bike lane. My neighbor is in her garden, outside my back window, singing, or shouting, incredibly loud, to a song that was popular in the 90’s. Little kids on the street. The ex-military security squad at my job. The waitresses at cafes. I don’t know why I never noticed this growing up, but I know it’s not just a figment of my imagination. The Dutch are constantly singing.

The great thing about this is that they have no shame. They don’t do that whole thing I do wherein when someone catches me singing I trail off and slink away as quickly as possible, avoiding eye contact and pretending it never happened. They look you in the eye as they belt it out, loud and proud and off tune (I’m not exaggerating when I say that in the past three weeks I haven’t heard a Dutch person sing in tune). None of them have been good singers. None of them really know the words. They were all really, really loud. But they are totally open about singing, wherever they are. And if you look at them like they’re crazy, they stare right back as if to say you, my friend, are the crazy one.

I really wish I was more like the Dutch and less my shrinking self, some days.

Things I have learned in the past two weeks

Some of this is awkward. Some is not.

1. How to ride a bicycle in the pouring rain, during rush hour, in a pencil skirt and heels.  (How, you ask? Carefully.)

2. Similarly, you have to be careful biking downtown any time between 6:00 pm and midnight. Because drunk bicyclists, even if you are said drunk bicyclist, are very, very dangerous.

3. Serbians sometimes order straight vodka with their dinner. None of that pansy wine-with-dinner stuff you see Western Europeans doing.

4. There is a bird outside my window that makes a peculiar noise at 4:45 a.m. every day, as the sun is rising. I want to end its life.

5. Dutch boys of all ages want to, uh practice their English with me. And when I say all ages, I mean anywhere from 12 to 50. If you're looking at it glass-half-full ...wider playing field.

6. Apparently when I talk I sound "like George W"... I didn't even realize that I drawl.

7. The Dutch search and rescue team coast guard team is apparently composed of male models who wear their wetsuits peeled down so far that if they were in America, there would be a lawsuit.

8. Baking late at night without measuring cups never turns out well. Especially when your landlord comes by the next morning to show a prospective tenant one of the bedrooms.

9. There's a deadly strain of e.coli on vegetables in Europe. Good thing I have consumed nothing but bread and cheese since I've been here.

10. Wandering alone a lot is good for the soul. So is going to the train station, picking a platform, and going on an adventure.

11. Security guards are human beings too. And apparently if you make friends with them, they won't say anything when there's two bottles of liquor in your briefcase as you put it through the scanner.

12. The Dutch special police forces are like American SWAT, only taller and brawnier, and they were in my office today. Not really complaining.

13. People who deal with death all day develop very twisted senses of humor. I understand them perfectly.

14. I am capable of, with the help of a tiny tiny Chinese girl and a French man, consuming a platter of meat literally the size of a boogie board.

15. I am almost short here. It's magnificent. 

16. In Amsterdam, there are big brothels where men literally stand outside of booths in line and go in one by one as if they're on an assembly lines. There are different sections, like aisles in a grocery store, for different kinds of girls. Or, if you prefer, not girls. It's like a sexcapodge. (No, this is not something I know from entering into any such establishment.)

17. Thai Massage doesn't really mean a massage.

18. It's possible to miss the ones you love so much that your stomach hurts.

19. Nevertheless, human beings can belong to a place. I kind of belong to this place. 

20. You really don't need to own a cell phone. Going two days straight without having a real conversation can be magical.

21. How to send emails in cyrillic Serbian.

22. There is nothing more marvelous than waking up to rain blowing in your open window. That wasn't sarcasm :)

23. When you take a lot of pictures but there's no one in them, people start to worry for your sanity/emotional health/social skills.