Packing August 4, 2009

Genoa was great this year.

I have been seeing it each summer since 2006: as a student in a holiday, as a job searcher, as a “house wife”, as a freelancer and this year…as a tourist. It was amazing. Of course, if the previous years wouldn’t have existed, this couldn’t have been so amazing.

Since I wrote last time, we moved. We were staying at a friend’s place on Via Balbi (Unesco heritage street) 2 minutes from the train station and 10 from the harbor. The street was very noise and lively: full of people of all colors and nationalities, some of them sipping their coffees on a terasse placed on the sidewalk, in front of the doorstep of the coffee shop. In one word, the touristic area, full of life, charm, young people, hot weather, dust, sleeping with open windows, hearing the bus every hour until 2 in the night and then starting again at 5 in the morning. Hearing the same song over and over again from the dancing school across the street. Seeing blond backpackers – so obviously not Italians since the Italians turned their heads and said “ciao bella” to the Scandinavian blonds. I missed the noise of this street and I took it in completely.

Then last Wednesday we moved to another friend’s place up on the hills, away from the tourist area. This neighbourhood is so amazing. I have been to Monica’s place before but never stayed here. I always smile when I remember how we got to know her. She is a Romanian who had a tough life and who’s been living in Genoa for almost 8 years now. The neighbourhood is one of the cheapest in Genoa, the kind of place where most of the Latin people live, together with some young Italian families with low budgets and old Italians who just stayed at “home”. And when I say old I mean from 90 years on. The blocks are build on every piece of land possible, they have terrasses one on top of the other, you need to climb hundreads of stairs to get to the highest block. In the same time, we are less than 2 km from the harbour, so in the night we can see the light of the laterna caressing the blocks. The wind is so enjoyable and seeing grass and trees is wonderful. People cherrish their small gardens and once in a while you can hear a granny calling her husband for lunch, asking him to leave the darn garden. Everybody says hello if they happen to go on the balconies and meet eachother’s eyes. You can actually hear birds and the air is clean and has an adurable temperature. Compared to Via Balbi where the heat was sometimes unbearable and because of the air humidity I felt like taking a shower every half an hour, this is heaven countryside. On Sunday you hear the church bells, and every morning some old people play some forgotten songs like our “romantze”…melancholic…

Of course, most of the women are housewives and at lunch time you can guess what type of food the nieghbour cooked by the smell. In Zurich that never happened to me…and the kitchens were so small…you could have definitely guessed that is not an enjoyable area. Here, kitchens are bigger. The kitchen is the room where family gatherings happen. With a 2-3 hours lunch break of course you can jump on your scooter and run home for lunch and then go back to work for a few more hours.

Well…that’s Genoa through my eyes as a tourist…of course if you search the archives of my blog from 2006 you will see my stories were different…

And like any other tourist, I am leaving. Me, my fiance Dani and my brother Luxi are flying to Brussels tomorrow. We just finished packing. Me and Dani have seen Brussels before and I it’s in the top of the “favourite cities to live in” list. For example I love Genoa but just to come here for a break, I couldn’t live here for the rest of my life. Things happen to slow, people are either tourists or old people…Last year I thought I could live in Brussels forever – it seems the perfect mix for me…let’s see how I feel this year…

And even though we are in a holiday, business has never been better…