Flying Ryan

Over the Alps

They say that soon or later Ryanair will make passengers pay 1euro for using the toilet on board. Everyone already knows that the company offers no service whatsoever and the reason why people like it is for its cheapness. I can’t complain at all. My first Ryanair flight was in 2006 from Milano to Oslo in occasion of my Erasmus exchange in Norway, and Ryanair was just inaugurating that new route...from cold to frozen! Back then flying with Ryanair was the only affordable option to get so up north. For uncountable times I’ve been flying to The Netherlands and back, then to Spain, to London, to Paris, to Latvia...and now to Belgium. The cheapest ticket I’ve ever bought was only 5 euro to Berlin. But of all trips and destinations, my favourite is always when I’m flying back home deep south.

I must say that flying over Italy is amazing and whenever I’m directed to Trapani or Palermo, Ryan feels to me like a high school friend taking me home while telling stories...from the Alps downwards is all a changing landscape of harbours and beaches, mountains and islands, sea everywhere, and the country’s unique shape to suggest what is what. Perhaps, it's that Italy everyone falls in love with.

Not that far from 'home'

Not long ago I was saying that living in Brussels for an Italian feels like living in Italy. My observation finds confirmation once again in the bus service in Brussels. Waiting for the bus is likely to take much longer than the actual ride. Taking two metro lines might paradoxically be an even faster solution. Guess what, in Italy you can't rely on any bus, while timetables are to be taken as an opinion rather than a fact. I have no experience of bus service in the very developed north of my country, but what 'comforts' me is that according to Bruno Bozzetto they are totally unreliable. To conlcude, if Brussels is Europe, I would then suggest Bruno Bozzetto to make some changes in the bus scene (and the bureaucracy scene too) of his video 'Europe and Italy' (excellent video for the rest :))

Petite Italie

Fact.

There is this nice little place in Brussels where all Italians come together. Many are young and bright expats, fed up with their youth-unfriendly country, yet nostalgic and with a touching Italianness. Piola.Libri is a library-wine-bar, it is THE Italian library in Brussels, and clearly a lovely cultural space. Probably it is just too small to host its wide population of fans and friends, but perhaps it is rather the numbers to be blamed. Italians are historically a folk of migrants and in Belgium they represent one of the biggest communities. La petite Italie is actually not so petite. The known fact is that Italians are everywhere, they really are, but I'm dazed by the fact that since I'm here in Brussels I've spoken much more Italian than in the last three years I've spent abroad and travelling around. And that happens also when my interlocutor is not Italian. Here I've so far found French, Polish, Germans, Dutch, British and Romanians all more than happy to practice their Italian with me. I think they are all way too fluent! 

For an Italian it really isn't challenging to live in Brussels. I'd say it's rather more challanging for a Dutch. They experience a cultural schock whenever something doesn't work as expected. Italians have clearly different standards as they are already used to a place where things do NOT work, or actually work much worse. Sometimes, Brussels feels like a piece of Mediterranean, chaotic, mixed, diverse, and bureaucratically confused, but then with a heavy weather and the stiff northern way of relating to other people in general. Not that this really counts, because the Brussels we live in is an international bubble, where no many Bruxellois/Brusselaars are left. 

This said, few days ago we went to Berlin and were surprised to find a sort of Little Italy there as well. Around the world, big little Italies can be found almost anywhere in the USA, then in Cananda, in São Paulo, in the UK and in Ireland...., and if I don't know of any Little Italy in China, Vietnam, Japan or Tanzania is just because, in case, I prefer to be left with the surprise!

La Sicile, c'est un rêve...

Arrived in Brussels few days ago, my ears have been pleased by this sentence quite a few times already...'Sicily is a dream!' and I, of course, reply by inviting people over so they can see its beauty with their own eyes. Brussels would be heaven on earth if it had a piece of Mediterranean coast to offer to its international dwellers, but so far it has only a brand new beach which I haven't yet heard much flatteries about. So far, it is being extremely warm here, and the attic we live in seems more of a green-house! But what do I complain about? We can't have everything!