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Eight, huit, otto
Otto. Non cinque, dieci e neanche un minuto. E’ quanto mi serve per cambiare d’abito, decine di volte al giorno. Cambiar d’abito metaforicamente, intendo. Cambiare ruolo, sesso, professione e tono di...
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Fifty shades of Grey or the modern Cinderella
Mio marito sta leggendo, con una lentezza disarmante, Fifty Shades of Grey. Scuote la testa a ogni pagina e mi chiede: “Ma che ci sarà mai in questo libro? E’ di una noia mortale”. E mi fornisce le...
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The return of primary school society
Do you remember that time when girls would play with girls and boys with boys? That primary school class where little girls, with pink ribbons, would sit all together in a corner, already gossiping and...
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Looking through pink glasses
Pink glasses have made a comeback. People seem addicted to them and refuse to take them off. A few years ago a relatively known French spin doctor announced that “Reality doesn’t matter. Only...
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A quiet romance
The coffee shop where it all started Bad romance. Cursed romance. Sick love. I have just completed my overdose of tv and finished watching season 2 of Homeland. (I went through 12 episodes in 2 days...
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Five things I learnt about love
I spent more time thinking about love than probably Elizabeth Darcy (née Bennet). At the age of 6 I engaged myself to a boy named M. without him being aware of that. I would take him by the arm to …...
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Chivalry, Sexual Harassment and a matter of latitude
“Speeches are like women’s skirts: the shorter, the better”. This is how a few days ago an Italian diplomat welcomed the guests of one of the many Brussels’ institutional gatherings. Someone I know was...
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The California diaries – Hiding in the woods and the Ketchup castle
We didn’t die after visiting Carmel, luckily enough. But we continued exploring the region after settling for the weekend in a wood cabin a few miles from Big Sur. It was cozy, eco-efficient and all...
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Journals are better than Prozac
“I’d sell both kidneys just to be 20 again”. This is what i said last night to my nephew who’s 20, gorgeous, youthful, handsome-and-doesn’t-know-it and totally lost. A year is a century for him, today...
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The perks of being an expat (or how I got socially promoted)
Being an expat is a privilege. None actually knows you. None remembers you with a fanny pack and a walkman back in 1989, none can talk behind your back of all the times you got dumped by boyfriends...
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30s: regretting 20s, looking forward to 40s
I write, think and talk a lot about age. Everyday. It became an obsession when I turned 30 and people expected me to be an adult when I couldn’t feel any actual difference from my younger self....
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Modern times, modern husbands
My husband is very busy. Constantly busy, apparently. He wants me to pass important communications via email. He won’t answer phone questions. He won’t even listen to a real life question. If I ask him...
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Ghosts from the past (or when an expat gets caught)
A few days after writing on the expat status something strange happened. I was coming back home from the market and saw a woman pushing a pram down my street. She looked familiar but truth is my sight...
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Dinner with an old flame: 5 days in Rome
Have you ever bumped into an old love? Someone you spent nights talking to and dreaming with but that at some point you had to leave, because he wasn’t right for you? Do you remember the...
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“Ma vatte’ a fa’‘na passeggiata, va’…”: Go have a walk, or the Italian answer...
Many says that Rome’s only flaw are the Romans. I think that the Romans are actually Rome’s greatest asset. Without its cynical, proud, indifferent, wise inhabitants Rome would be just an open museum....
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When expatriation gets to your face: how I became a foreigner to my people
I am a walking Italian stereotype. I tried everything to look different: bleached my hair during teenage (ending up more orange than blonde), tried an endless number of hair coloring later on, avoided...
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Little Expats I (or the thousand and one correct ways of raising your offspring)
One of the few things I still like about Brussels is the open show of expat parallel realities. Bringing the kids to the playground is per se an anthropological relevant moment: there I see mothers and...
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Little Expats II: Tiger mothers and The Pursuit of Happiness
Some say that Belgium is the lab of Europe: whatever happens here will eventually happen to the rest of the Continent. It is indeed the place where different and far away cultures manage to mix...
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Cutting the cord: when, where and how you became an EXPAT?
Legally, your are born the very minute your umbilical cord is cut, and you have to breathe for the first time on your own. I was surprised enough when I had my first child in discovering that coming...
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Liebster Liebster Liebster…I am thankful and clueless
The strangest thing happened this morning. My phone beeped while I was in the car listening to Carla Bruni and swearing in my head against the usual Monday Morning jam: it was ladyofthecakes messaging...
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