8 November 2013

Per la versione italiana clicca qui.

My temporary house is in Brunswick, East Melbourne, and the black taxi-driver, as soon as I tell him I’m italian, phones right away at his brother-in-law who lived for five years in Naples. Ciao, como stai? Di dove sei? Io sono lavorato a Napoli e a Milano col camion, tu conosci lago di Como?

I don’t pay enough for the taxi and the neighborhood looks nice, frame one-story-houses and pretty trees. The guy who hosts me he’s a fella from Bologna, friend of a friend of mine who passed me his contact. When the door opens, Genna comes to greet to me and we strongly hug. The living room looks like a camp, there are backpacks everywhere on the floor. They belong to the roman Marco and Filippone and to the bolognese Giuliano, whereas Domenico from Calabria and Andrea from Verona live in the house with Genna.

Tobacco on the table, tips of a smoked cigarettes and cigarette papers, full ashtrays. Genna says he’s doing pretty well for himself in Melbourne, nice friends, kind wages, opportunity to have a good career, although he still doesn’t know what he wants to do. Into the room everyone is a chef or a kind of. Filippone has got a thriving restaurant in Rome, he moved to Australia for to open another one. He hopes to bring all his family here, but the application to became an australian citizen is long-lasting and hard: first you have to find a job, then to hope your boss helps you with permanent visa application. And, man, that means a lot of fucking money. I tell them, I don’t care about remaining in Australia and neither taking the second working and holiday visa. I just want to go adventuring and take my chance, what is to be it will be. To be honest, I contacted some graphic studios when I was staying in Italy still. Just a couple replied to me, they liked my works but not my visa. I don’t want to complain myself, I know that if part of me is looking for a stable job and a stable relationship, the other part loves to be on the road and to vagabond. And, time ago, there was someone who told me “as long as you don’t allign your desires with your heart you’ll keep living in the same way; but, maybe, that’s all right”.

I take a beer, what pleasure! It’s quite two o’clock in the night, I don’t feel too much tired.

«Where’s Giuliano?», I ask – it was him that gave me Genna’s contact – «He’s gone out with Marchino, they should come back quickly.».

And infact they arrive soon after and immediately it turns into a party. Both Giuliano and Genna seem freaked out.

«Hey, you should look at your pupils… »

«That’s mdma, Cate, cocaine is too expensive.»

We move to kitchen, the others in living room are just in their sleeping bags.

«Hey, Baldi, do you want a line?»

I met Giuliano last summer on the beach, in Pesaro. We barely talked, he’d seemed to me nice-looking with his unquiet eyes, but that was it. Then, talking with friends about Australia and bla bla bla, someone told me he was there by time, and that maybe he could help me. Actually, I have other friends in Melbourne, they aren’t just from Pesaro, even they are from my neighborhood. But there was some problem with accomodation because no one of them have got an house, they are hosted by other italian friends. That’s Italy!

After a time we go to bed, I open my camp-bag over an air bed. I could start sleeping if Filippone’s iPad didn’t light up and vibrate every two seconds for messages coming from such fucking application.

There are four sleeping people in the living room. Two on the two couches, the others on the floor. After a bit time, finally sleep wins over me. The day after I should be doing a lot of things like to apply for medicare, to open a bank account, to buy a new australian sim card and to seek a job.

Giuliano wakes up pretty early and me too. We decided to meet Marchino in the city, he came back to the hostel the night before. There’s also Filippone with us, the Anxiety-Man, a good boy but I can’t really stand him, seriously, he talks no-stop. Anyway, we roll all together through the streets of Melbourne. We clearly are a clique of immigrant, you can guess from a mile off. Italians, easily recognise each another. The face features, the gait, the way we like hairdressing and to dress. Combed gel hair, stretch brand-designer t-shirts, faked worn-out jeans. Melbourne is a kind of little Italy. You can move to Australia without talking one english word, it’s enough you know someone that for sure knows someone else who throws you in any restaurant in Lygon street to do the dishwasher. Sometimes it could be easier to find a job for an italian than an english or german with very good english. Because if english and germans prefer traveling and coming back to motherland when their visa expires, for the italian is different. The italian moves to Australia hoping to end up here forever; he’s a desperate permanent visa seeker, he places himself in a big city like Melbourne or Sydney and he doesn’t want move any more. He saves money and then to bleeds dry for the cost of the student visa. He works for 10, 12 hours a day or more, the main thing is doesn’t come back to Italy. I don’t know if it’s an authentic desire, I mean, staying in Australia at any price; sometime it sounds to me like “in so far everyone runs, I run too”. Obviously, this is in general.

Thank heaven, Filippone moves away to see a room so that me, Giuliano and Marchino can wander around the city in peace. Melbourne is a very nice place. Victoria Market is a covered-market where you can purchase everything at low-cost. There are a lot of stands which sell italian products, from mozzarella di bufala to under-oil-hot peppers. The most popular little Italy in Melbourne is Lygon street. Here there’s an obscene souvenir shop that you suddenly notice for the Eros Ramazzotti and Gigi D’Alessio songs coming out at full blast. It sells Del Piero football t-shirts, flags, gadgets, shit in a few words. Instead, the best italian shop is Mediterranea, a supermarket in Sydney road, maybe a little expensive: a Bialetti moka for two small cups of coffee costs $36.

There are a lot of shopping centers in the city. They are enormous, you can loose yourself inside, labirynths with four or five flats. I need just an adaptor plug so Kmart is perfect, I find one at $9. If you are a backpacker you became aware very quickly of the weight of everything. In ethical and physical sense. Would you have got less money and a heavier bag? The equation couldn’t be worst.

We move to an asian restaurant to eat something. Melbourne is full of asians, maybe australians hide themself during the day and just come out just in the night, like the coackroaches. Filippone, the Anxiety Man, catches up with us in spite of myself, and, with my big surprise, I ascertain he can chat while is eating too. I’m feel nauseous. I can’t eat nothing. It’s like my stomach were tied by an elastic. Giuliano insists that I grab a bite, so, just for his kindness, I order a vegetable soup. I think that’s for the jet lag, anyway.

After coffee time we go for a stroll in Swanston street, where every ten metres there’s a street artist. Also in this case, the most part of them are asians: you can find the chinese pop singer, the indonesian illusionist and, Jesus, a crazy Sailor Moon hairdressing korean girl sings with a carrot in hand.

Luckly we don’t stop, keep on walking. We decide not to go back home. Genna catches up with us in a pub close to Backpackers Hostel, the most popoular hostel in Melbourne. A lot of guys live in the hostel for months, usually as long as they find a job, but it depends. In the pub Giuliano tells me his only romantic relationship in Australia is with an italian girl from Treviso who does the streaptease. He sold marijuana, she bought it. So they start a challenging sexual relationship, a tour the force under the sheets, a sort of chinese torture, he say.

«And then?»

«She was completely crazy, it couldn’t work.»

We order a couple of jugs. I discover for the first time what was a jug. It’s very cheap compared to a normal beer which generally costs $10. Beer and alcool in general are bleed the wallet in Australia. And you cannot buy them at the supermarket, you have to go to Liquorland and, anyway, the cheapest tin costs $3. If you want became drunk without spending too much, you should buy the wine in the paper box, 12 liters at price of $10, less or more. Wait, there’s a supermarket that sells bottle of wine, very cheap too, Aldi: $3,50.

After two glasses of beer I’m quite drunk. Near to us, a table of chinese are celebrating something. I go to them for calling out one at arm wrestling. Obiouvsly, I lost. But I did just to be a little funny. And so that, this my bravery ends up in two Hong Kong girls’s mobiles.

7 November 2013

Se vuoi leggermi in italiano clicca qui!

I decided to go away because I knew that staying in my beloved town wouldn’t bring me far. I adore Pesaro, its parties on the beach, the clubs on the bay, the dj sets in the garages, the bar in my neighborhood where I can sip a spritz at the happy hour time. And it’s perfect for me living in my parents’s house without my parents, because one stays in Ancona, the other one in Rome. I don’t pay any rent, just internet, and my dad’s fines sometimes because his motorbike is registered at the old address still. I’m an illustrator and I spend most of my time dreaming at my desk, waiting for something to pick me up, just as a fish hitched on an hook and taken out from the water.

I earn pretty well when I work, but I don’t work a lot. Maybe the summer time is the best period for making up my earnings because there are so many vacant positions in ice-cream shops, hotels and restaurants, although I do prefer teaching photoshop, however, just in desperate situations, also I read tarot cards. Anyway, I tried looking for graphic designer position but I’m not a graphic designer, I’ve got a bachelor in literature and another one in fine art. I’m the stereotype of the thirty-year-old from West with two bachelors but without a serious stable job.

I’m the daughter of the childish, dis-educated Italy that doesn’t want to grow, with its three-floors-houses where grandmothers stay at the first, parents at the second and sons at the third or restored loft.

I heard stories about who had gone away, someone in London or in Paris, someone else in the Usa and others in Australia. Then, in an XY point of my summer time I made my decision to move to somewhere. Yeah. Stop with the snogs at Dalla Cira and casual works. This is gonna be the occasion to find a stable job and maybe a stable relationship! Maybe.

So I bought the flight ticket around one week later. And as the premise was “to go far” I can say now, for sure man, that the first aim has been met with success.

Now, I don’t want to annoy anyone with stories about my summer time, before catching the flight I mean. At the beginning I had an awful anxiety about the choise between Australia or California, then I started to be worried that something could go amiss. For the rest, everythings was the same, no romantic coup de théâtre, maybe a couple of love letters but nothing of special, nothing that I didn’t know already.

In the plane I sit near a twenty-year-old filipino priest. He start to chat with me and as many other young priests he doesn’t dislike the pretty girls. I travel with Qantas and I watch muslim adverts on the little screen in front my seat: a man and a woman, husband and wife I suppouse (come on, of course!), he swims in glowing full bottom suite outfit, she smiles at him from far in a beautiful quite-ten-metre-of-silk outfit. I arrive in Doha. You can see a paring of city, enchanting, bright in the dark of the night. Into the airport, mobiles and laptops cost an oddity. I pass one hour or more looking for my gate, then I wait. And wait. For four hours. I make stretching, eat something. I don’t listen to music and neither read books, just I look around.

At the boarding, a guy from Senegal smiles at me and I reply kindly. He asks me some general questions, like how old I am, if I’m married, so then, suddenly, he applies as possible my future consort, in the same way someone asks at the waiter of a very busy restaurant if there is a free table still. At my denial (“I’m so sorry but I’m going to meet my boyfriend in Melbourne! We gonna be married between a couple of months!”) a fifty-year-old filipina woman first looks at me touched then she starts talking to me in italian, in a beautiful strong roman accent, ending up to describe the amazing super luxury flat in Piazza di Spagna in Rome where she has been working from thirteen years: O_O

We pass over the Indian Ocean. This time I make friends with an australian artist born in Sicily, Eolo, yes, like the wind. We talk around a lot of topics, we like each other, he gives me a couple of phone numbers for to found a job in Melbourne. One is Brunetti, the most popular italian café of the city, and the other one is his friend Giancarlo, a manager of a freezing pizza factory.

When I arrive at customs I’m in a bit of a frenzy, you know, Airport Securety has left a mark in us all. Luckly no one looks at me and in few minutes I have the stamp on my passport.

I’m officially in Australia. Melbourne, 7 November 2013.