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kidyounoti'm going to tell you alllll about it!
DAY ONE:
nix is awesome. that said. he arrived at 14.45 at the BLQ airport and he took the bus to the city's train station. i was supposed to meet him there - i thought it'd take him half an hour to get off the plane, collect bags etc, and another half to get to the city. so i left late enough to be actually late, because his plane landed early! i also thought i was on the 36 (bus that stops right in front of the station) but i was on the 11 (stops nearly enough), so i missed the stop and instead of turning towards the station it went forward and i had to run all the way back. he had been waiting for 20 minutes and i felt real bad! but then we finally met and it was not as awkward as i thought it would be.
short overview of : he's cute, funny, easy, hot and ... "relaxed", we would say. that is, he wasn't all embarrassed and shy and stuff, or at least if he was he didn't show it at all! he made a good impression on really everybody, and of course on me particularly.
we weren't sure where to go because he had a trolley and the museums were already closed (they close at 4pm in the weekdays), so we went for a soymilk cappuccino first, and on the way i showed him the 'rats and drug addicts square' (real name, in case you're wondering: piazza dei martiri, martyrs' square). the cappuccino was delicious even though the bar's mirror walls were kind of creepy. i saw australian money for the first time there! we took a couple of pictures and then we left. the bar was in via marconi, and we walked on the same street towards the very centre of the city. i showed him the main horizontal street, which is via ugo bassi (that becomes via rizzoli in front of piazza maggiore/at the corner with the library building), and we saw the main square that is piazza maggiore, and the tiny square in front of the library that is neptune's square (piazza nettuno). i learned the words "nativity scene". since we didn't exactly know where to go and nix was very tired even though he kept saying he wasn't at all, we took a tiny street going south behind the square and saw lots of cheese (and i learned how to pronounce 'dairy'), and handmade honey (no, seriously!). then we randomly ended up in piazza minghetti, which is the guy from which my school takes its name, and who had nothing to do with electricity but was, in fact, a politician during the first independence war. and i should've known that because i actually studied it like two months ago.
i showed him all the expensive italian shops (gucci, d&g) that are in via farini, and then we took the bus in via s. stefano to go to my place because nix was so tired and sleepy that he could hardly stand and kept crying and stomping saying he had to pee, he was hungry, he was cold, and how long it was to home, and why were we out there, and i didn't really want to bother picking him up or buying him candy, so we went, even though he HAD HIS CHANCE.
at home we were greeted by jack, that made a good impression on nix and vice-versa (even though he's a cat person and i don't know if i can ever forgive him that), and by our flatmates. francesco was too embarrassed to even try and speak (he did say a couple of things though), even though he does speak english okay. davide doesn't know a word so he simply didn't say anything. nah, kidding, they did both say a couple of things.
then we decided to play guitar hero 3 and wii sports. nix tried guitar hero and even though he had a real talent (not kidding here! he did!) he decided he'd better just lay on the bed half asleep pretending to enjoy watching fra and me playing. david was busy in the kitchen, preparing an awesome tiramisu' of which we only had a slice two days after before it was completely gone.
so fra and i played guitar hero and wii sports, and jack cuddled sleepy nix on the bed.
at some point nix went to the bathroom and everybody turned to me at once and went all "OMG HE'S SO CUTE!!! AND SO NICE!! OMG SQUEEEE!" but all in italian so nix couldn't hear them from the bathroom.
after not too long, while i was kicking fra's arse at wii tennis, fra's girlfriend marica (not maria, not milena, not marzia, not m...whatever) came to have dinner. so since fra and marica (and davide apparently!) wanted to have a nice romantic dinner alone, nix and i had our very own romantic dinner before them. nothing fancy though - potatoes à la nicolas (to be read in french), and red kidney beans with mushrooms tofu that didn't really taste like mushrooms at all.
so nix met marica who only said the word "hi" in 48 hours. she speaks english too but the awesomeness of nix might have made english-speaking italians too uncomfortable to even speak. they were probably too busy staring at his cuteface.
after dinner we borrowed fra's laptop and watched the curious case of benjamin button. i was really glad as i was not the only one not understanding half of the things they said. nix was very impressed and amused by the short sketches about a man getting hit by lightnings.
after the oh-so-long movie i brought the laptop back to fra's room, with very bad timing, as fra and marica were all cuddly on the bed and stuff. i did knock, but it felt a little wrong anyway.
at some point during the evening nix checked his email and learned that "scheda" means "tab" in firefox. he did not, sadly, hack my livejournal.
then he took a shower and we went to bed and, surprisingly enough, jack did not try to lick nix too much. which is very weird because jack usually licks everybody everywhere. he must have sensed the tiredness and decided to leave both of us alone!
we both did not sleep well. i kept waking up in between erotic dreams of nix. i don't know his excuse. i also forgot to close the blinds, which is not a problem for me because i don't care for light, but i think that might have bothered nix. oh well.
we set the alarm for 8 o'clock in order to be out by 9.
DAY ONE MAP. not very accurate once it goes past piazza maggiore. 1 is the train station, 2 is piazza del nettuno and 3 is piazza maggiore. the first horizontal line coming from the train station is the bar where we had our cappuccini (not cappuccinos!), and the other one is more or less where the bus stop is. (not true, it is further down, but i couldn't be bothered, ok!?).
DAY TWO:
we got up, had tea, walked jack and left for our fantastic adventure in bologna. we wanted to go to a few museums, but since we didn't really plan things the way we should have, we ended up walking back and forth on the same streets instead of just visiting all the museums in one area and then moving on to another.
we first went to the museum of music, where the attack of the children begun. from then on, wherever we went we had a whole class (like, 20) of kids following us creepily. at the museum of music, which is apparently the most important museum of music in the whole of europe, there first was this woman that told us "oh, how nice it is to see such young boys visiting museums!" at which i wanted to laugh but i didn't. we left our jackets and bags in a creepy room down in the basement of which nix has a picture, then we walked up an enormous staircase with kitsch stuff made with sparkly other stuff hanging from the roof. yeah, i don't know either.
the museum was pretty, not so big, and had really cool roofs, of which nix has pictures as well. we saw lots and lots of extremely cool instruments, like a "double flute" which makes three sounds you can't alter (like bagpipes, but three sounds), while you can make whatever other notes with the other two flutes. it looks like five flutes glued together.
there also was this weird thing that looked like some sort of horn which ended in a monster face with its mouth open, there was mozart's FAIL test to enter some kind of music school here in bologna, and a painting of bach's 20th son, along with lots of castrati singers, tiny music books and huge encyclopedias of music, etc. etc.
we were almost on our way out when we noticed that we probably missed a good chunk of the museum. so we went back in and it was the biggest mistake OF OUR LIVES. this older guy, a volunteer for the museum, spotted us and decided to come give us a 101 class about the museum itself and music in general.
long story short: bach's 20th son is awesome, the museum itself is extremely awesome, so awesome the bill gates himself visited it, and it has a very rare marine.. string.. instrument.. thing, which looked fugly and i bet sounded even worse, and REAL music is only classical music and all the rest is destined to fall in the music oblivium after not too long. for example, if you're interested, the beatles will be unknown in 20-30 years time to the next generations, just like the 20s-30s jazz is completely unknown to us youngsters. apart from maria callas because she is apparently above all this and her star will shine forever and ever in the universe of awesome music.
of course it makes no sense to me, but i'll keep all of this in mind just in case the next generation won't know who the beatles are - in that case, we should have to give this guy the fame he deserves for this theory he has developed.
then we went to the university area, where i showed nix piazza verdi, which was unusually empty of drunk people and students just laying there for the fun of it. we wanted to go to the museum of ancient maps, but we found out its real name was actually "the museum of ancient maps, cannons, boats, medieval fortifications and a tiny bit of astronomy too". the maps were really, really cool, and nix has a picture of australia as pictured on an ancient globe. which means only part of australia.
there were plenty of places with funny names, and it was overall awesome.
that was only one room though.
the next room was medieval fortifications. we were all like " WTF?!" because a) it was unexpected and b) you couldn't really understand what those things were - there were like blueprints but made of wood (woodprints? brownprints?) all over the walls. i asked a guy who worked there about what those things were and he told us that they were probably fortifications but he didn't know and he wasn't sure. ... right. there we saw a very nice panting of a rare nothing, hanging of the wall. we were both really impressed by it.
next room was cannons. which was, to be honest, paintings of cannons on the wall and tiny toy cannons on a couple of shelves. BUT. there was a picture of cannonballs on the wall and we have like 34938493 pictures of it. it's basically one cannonball, and it shows all the different variations. by which i mean all the different sizes. how many were there? i think 16. nix knows it, he counted them, he liked it a lot and i would've bought him a reproduction of the print if only the museums had shops like they do in every other city! (note: the museums did not have shops apart from the music one, but it only like 3 things, of which nix bought one)
the next room was some weird thing about constellations and the history of the city of bologna. it was all touchscreens and they weren't really workind so that was disappointing. next room there was some sort of 3d prints on the wall representing i don't know what and a big sphere made out of tvs showing some chorus singing a very creepy song. i was really creeped out but nix liked it. bah, tourists are weird.
then there were boats, which were really nice! there were huge models. and also a box with spices. there weren't many though, but i have to say we didn't see the whole of it because there were people messing with a boat and it made nix uncomfortable because it looked like they were going to break it any second.
so we were about to leave and we noticed another room with some cool books. i showed you a couple pictures of it. we could touch them! they were really really old and dusty.
when we went to collect our stuff, the museum guy told us there was another part of the museums for us to see if we wanted to. about anatomy and physics. a girl warned us that it might have been a bit gross, but not so much. so we decided to go. BAD, BAD IDEA.
so basically half of it was FOETUSES. wax foetuses. foetuses in every position you can think of. uteruses with surgeons' hands in them. cut upen uteruses. deformed babies. polyphemus babies with their nose on their forehead. forceps used to capture wild babies. more uteruses. twin babies. and more stuff used to make babies be born (correct this sentence plz. i do not understand the use of the verb 'to be born'. i hate this verb.).
we were really, really grossed and took no pictures.
the next few rooms were about muscles, bones, organs and other tasty stuff. i was a little grossed there as well (about the muscles more than anything, like the diaphragm just, you know, hanging there looking like beef) but nix wasn't and i took a picture of him with some skeleton with bulgy eyes.
the other part was about stuffed animals (i don't know whether they were real or wax as well), and very exciting bits of rock, all guarded by a huge pope painted on a wall. then there were more bits of rock. over all, i think you could say that half of the museum was about bits of rock.
after that, we ate piadina in a place called 'pappappero', whose logo is a kangaroo! that was a very cool coincidence!
we spent a lot of time trying to figure out whether your 'lard' is what i mean for 'lard', and i found out yesterday that we have different word for lard and that pork fat that looks like butter, but you don't really know what 'lard' is (what we mean for lardo), which is like the disgusting version of bacon. i mean you eat it in slices anyway.
ANYWAY. nix decided the piadina was so delicious he wanted to bring some of it home, so he said, "i think that if i put some of this liquid cheese on my pants, i won't have to declare it when i get to australia and i will be able to bring it home and enjoy it once more". i was too busy giggling at this italian version of 'pimp mah pants' that i didn't notice my own piadina started dripping liquid... vegetables... (wtf? i still don't know what the hell it was. grilled vegetables shouldn't do that!) on my own pants. so we had matching pants and i was happy. nix wasn't really, because he kept checking his pants as we walked on, but at least he knew he had his fancy shoes at home so there was nothing to worry about.
then it was closing time for shops (i thought it normal, but apparently it's not in every country!) - they close at about 12.30/13 and open again at about 15. they basically have a lunch break during which they're closed. so we went to saint francis' square (piazza san francesco), which was on fire, and we sat there for a long time taking pictures and waiting till our arses were two blocks of ice. at that point we went to a tea shop, which was closed, and we waited outside for it to open, talking about primordial dwarves and conjoined twins and other fascinating things. nix bought some really tasty herbal tea and then we went home because we couldn't do anything else - all we could talk about and think of was TEA TEA TEA TEATEAOMGTEATEA.
so we went home, nix showed me his mad tea-making skillz, and davide had some too. it got quite late (6pm), and we had decided we would go out for dinner that night, all the five of us (nix, me, davide, fra and marica).
so checked lj, my email and other stuff while nix decided to enjoy a very italian nap. at about 7pm we left and we went to a pizzeria called totò, in front of which nix got almost run over giving me quite a scare, fact that almost ruined my evening because i got SO SCARED you have NO IDEA.
we had an enormous pizza, not very full of stuff but most definitely tasty, and talked about buttsecks, dildos, porn movies and octopus fetishes.
after dinner fra had to go to work, marica went home and so did davide, while nix and i went to an irish pub called 'the auld dubliner' (i might have posted about it at some point) where we couldn't find a decent table and had to sit on a barrel. nix had a white beer (I KNOW RIGHT), and i had my usual tennent's super, which was enough for me (after the other pint i had at dinner) to become slightly happier, so to speak. at some point our drinking night was ruined by some stupid dj having a stupid quiz game speaking very loudly and being generally very annoying, so we went home.
on the bus, i don't even remember why, nix started explaining to me the basic of cricket, which amused him because he never would've thought he'd have to explain such a commonly played game as cricket to anybody, ever. when we got home we turned the computer on and watched videos of cricket stuff, nix made me some nice drawings of cricket ... field... things, and even though i cannot remember 3/4 of the terms he taught me, i have to say that i do really understand cricket now, even though i am not able to call every thing by its name. but i'll get there!
we went to bed at about 1am, and again, i don't remember why, but he sang adam buxton's theme for the quantum of solace movie, which i posted about yesterday night, and that was about the funniest thing that i had ever heard in my life. so i couldn't stop giggling for a good while, and i think the 2 pints of beer helped there.
DAY THREE:
we woke up at about 9 o'clock even though the alarm was at 9.30. nix's flight was at 15.10, but he wanted to be there 2 hours prior, so we should've left the house by 12. instead of getting up and doing stuff, we spent the morning in bed and he taught me how to play a weird kind of sudoku that has no numbers in the grid. that was real fun, and i also got to write stuff on his sudoku book like hearts and other declarations of love.
we got up by 11, we had tea and tasted the delicious tiramisu', and noticed it was quite late. so we quickly got dressed and got out.
we stopped by the train station to have lunch. falafel, we thought. what could ever go wrong with a falafel, we thought?
first of all mine had yogurt in it while i said not to put it. then the guy defrosted the falafels right in front of me by putting them in a microwave (i mean, he picked them up from the freezer, really). then, it didn't really taste that good. at all.
even though i was quite sad that this had to be the last food memory nix had of italy, we caught the bus to the airport, and nix gave me some australian coins that i still have here in front of me. (♥) he also gave me ten euro cents which he told me are worth hundreds and hundreds of australian dollars. i believe him.
the airport part is sad so i won't go into that in details :( i have to say though that he did speak in his sexy irish accent before he left and that made me extremely happy. in my pants. he noticed my face was all red, heeee. what can i say, i'm not kidding when i say i love accents.
i took a couple of pictures of him going through security (i was behind a glass wall, it felt like a zoo or something) and i waved him goodbye with my invisible handkerchief.
i wrote him a text message while i was on the bus - or, well, i actually sent him a text he wrote on my cellphone the night before at the pub. it went like this:
"Nix is awesome! And i an a fish! I am really drunk and I'm passed out under the table. Because I am a lightweight italian that can't hold his drink."
he texted me back and wrote a "MATE" that i now can pronounce the australian way! (i'm not too good at it but i'm getting there. saying "australia" the australian way is way too difficult for me though!)
and that was the end of our love story D:
CONCLUSION:
nix is AWESOME. he kept telling me nice things! heee! apart from the whole "your face" that went on for the first two days, which resulted in my face being a fish and my face being some other unpleasant things, but that's okay! ♥
we had a fantastic time, i've seen things in my city i had never seen before (heh), and he boosted my confidence so much that my life will now be forever divided into "before nix" and "after nix".
THOUGHTS ON LANGUAGE:
it wasn't that hard to start speaking english right out of the blue, and it surprised me enough. i never got to a particularly "bad pronounciation" point like i thought i would (i thought i'd get tired of speaking english after a while!), even though i have to say my pronounciation was a tad bit crooked by the second day. i have no idea why, because it wasn't really "italian", it was just weird (and wrong!). it was a specific thing, which is words like "about", "now", "brown" and stuff like that. i think that would be the 'o-u' sound. i don't know where that came from, but nix could still understand me beyond my butchering of the english language so that was fine.
i did get really tired of speaking english on the first day. after we finished watching benjamin button and nix said something, i knew i had to answer in english, but my brain was all "STOP! STOP THIS NONSENSE! I AM TIRED! PLEASE SPEAK YOUR LANGUAGE! CANNOT COMPUTE! CANNOT COMPUTE!" but everything turned out fine eventually because i didn't get this feeling on the second night. perhaps it was just a feeling of general tiredness caused by all the excitement!
another thing is that i found it remarkably hard to call the restaurant to book a place. i usually plan my phone calls, which means i think of what to say before i actually make the call. and my brain kept thinking in english! and i would think half a sentence like "hello, i'd like to book..." and then go "NO! THINK IN ITALIAN!". i ended up not thinking about the phone call at all but i managed to speak italian. lol.
another thing, is compliments that i feel like writing because i love compliments: nix said i spoke english well, and davide said that if he didn't know any better, he would've thought i was a native english speaker when he heard me talk. to be honest, davide doesn't speak english so i don't really know if he'd be able to tell a bad accent, but whatever, right!
also, when we were on the bus or in other places were people could hear us talk, i got the same weird looks as nix, which made me think they didn't understand i was italian, which for me is a compliment.
and, after nix left and i told davide about how hard it was to switch from english to italian in the middle of conversation (to translate both ways), he told me that he had noticed i had an english accent *while speaking italian* while nix was here. i found that absolutely lulzworthy, mostly because i didn't notice at all! i think that has to do with the thinking in different languages. i mean, when i speak english, i think in english, when i speak italian, i think in italian (might sound obvious, but it really isn't!) so not only speaking different languages, but switching your brain's language options back and forth during a conversation might have caused a bit of confusion every now and then :P
apart from the few words i had started pronouncing weirdly, i have to say that i'm really glad with how i've done english-wise. it was my first time ever having long conversations with an english-speaking person, and i only had a few problems with words i didn't remember but nothing major at all (and sometimes i would not remember the words but when nix said them i did know them).
this gave me hope about my CAE exam in june!
that said, this is about the longest post i've EVER made in my entire LJ carreer. people who read the whole thing will get a prize!
and now, if you don't mind, i'm going to do something else!! i've been writing this for like AGES.
MATE!
DAY ONE:
nix is awesome. that said. he arrived at 14.45 at the BLQ airport and he took the bus to the city's train station. i was supposed to meet him there - i thought it'd take him half an hour to get off the plane, collect bags etc, and another half to get to the city. so i left late enough to be actually late, because his plane landed early! i also thought i was on the 36 (bus that stops right in front of the station) but i was on the 11 (stops nearly enough), so i missed the stop and instead of turning towards the station it went forward and i had to run all the way back. he had been waiting for 20 minutes and i felt real bad! but then we finally met and it was not as awkward as i thought it would be.
short overview of : he's cute, funny, easy, hot and ... "relaxed", we would say. that is, he wasn't all embarrassed and shy and stuff, or at least if he was he didn't show it at all! he made a good impression on really everybody, and of course on me particularly.
we weren't sure where to go because he had a trolley and the museums were already closed (they close at 4pm in the weekdays), so we went for a soymilk cappuccino first, and on the way i showed him the 'rats and drug addicts square' (real name, in case you're wondering: piazza dei martiri, martyrs' square). the cappuccino was delicious even though the bar's mirror walls were kind of creepy. i saw australian money for the first time there! we took a couple of pictures and then we left. the bar was in via marconi, and we walked on the same street towards the very centre of the city. i showed him the main horizontal street, which is via ugo bassi (that becomes via rizzoli in front of piazza maggiore/at the corner with the library building), and we saw the main square that is piazza maggiore, and the tiny square in front of the library that is neptune's square (piazza nettuno). i learned the words "nativity scene". since we didn't exactly know where to go and nix was very tired even though he kept saying he wasn't at all, we took a tiny street going south behind the square and saw lots of cheese (and i learned how to pronounce 'dairy'), and handmade honey (no, seriously!). then we randomly ended up in piazza minghetti, which is the guy from which my school takes its name, and who had nothing to do with electricity but was, in fact, a politician during the first independence war. and i should've known that because i actually studied it like two months ago.
i showed him all the expensive italian shops (gucci, d&g) that are in via farini, and then we took the bus in via s. stefano to go to my place because nix was so tired and sleepy that he could hardly stand and kept crying and stomping saying he had to pee, he was hungry, he was cold, and how long it was to home, and why were we out there, and i didn't really want to bother picking him up or buying him candy, so we went, even though he HAD HIS CHANCE.
at home we were greeted by jack, that made a good impression on nix and vice-versa (even though he's a cat person and i don't know if i can ever forgive him that), and by our flatmates. francesco was too embarrassed to even try and speak (he did say a couple of things though), even though he does speak english okay. davide doesn't know a word so he simply didn't say anything. nah, kidding, they did both say a couple of things.
then we decided to play guitar hero 3 and wii sports. nix tried guitar hero and even though he had a real talent (not kidding here! he did!) he decided he'd better just lay on the bed half asleep pretending to enjoy watching fra and me playing. david was busy in the kitchen, preparing an awesome tiramisu' of which we only had a slice two days after before it was completely gone.
so fra and i played guitar hero and wii sports, and jack cuddled sleepy nix on the bed.
at some point nix went to the bathroom and everybody turned to me at once and went all "OMG HE'S SO CUTE!!! AND SO NICE!! OMG SQUEEEE!" but all in italian so nix couldn't hear them from the bathroom.
after not too long, while i was kicking fra's arse at wii tennis, fra's girlfriend marica (not maria, not milena, not marzia, not m...whatever) came to have dinner. so since fra and marica (and davide apparently!) wanted to have a nice romantic dinner alone, nix and i had our very own romantic dinner before them. nothing fancy though - potatoes à la nicolas (to be read in french), and red kidney beans with mushrooms tofu that didn't really taste like mushrooms at all.
so nix met marica who only said the word "hi" in 48 hours. she speaks english too but the awesomeness of nix might have made english-speaking italians too uncomfortable to even speak. they were probably too busy staring at his cuteface.
after dinner we borrowed fra's laptop and watched the curious case of benjamin button. i was really glad as i was not the only one not understanding half of the things they said. nix was very impressed and amused by the short sketches about a man getting hit by lightnings.
after the oh-so-long movie i brought the laptop back to fra's room, with very bad timing, as fra and marica were all cuddly on the bed and stuff. i did knock, but it felt a little wrong anyway.
at some point during the evening nix checked his email and learned that "scheda" means "tab" in firefox. he did not, sadly, hack my livejournal.
then he took a shower and we went to bed and, surprisingly enough, jack did not try to lick nix too much. which is very weird because jack usually licks everybody everywhere. he must have sensed the tiredness and decided to leave both of us alone!
we both did not sleep well. i kept waking up in between erotic dreams of nix. i don't know his excuse. i also forgot to close the blinds, which is not a problem for me because i don't care for light, but i think that might have bothered nix. oh well.
we set the alarm for 8 o'clock in order to be out by 9.
DAY ONE MAP. not very accurate once it goes past piazza maggiore. 1 is the train station, 2 is piazza del nettuno and 3 is piazza maggiore. the first horizontal line coming from the train station is the bar where we had our cappuccini (not cappuccinos!), and the other one is more or less where the bus stop is. (not true, it is further down, but i couldn't be bothered, ok!?).
DAY TWO:
we got up, had tea, walked jack and left for our fantastic adventure in bologna. we wanted to go to a few museums, but since we didn't really plan things the way we should have, we ended up walking back and forth on the same streets instead of just visiting all the museums in one area and then moving on to another.
we first went to the museum of music, where the attack of the children begun. from then on, wherever we went we had a whole class (like, 20) of kids following us creepily. at the museum of music, which is apparently the most important museum of music in the whole of europe, there first was this woman that told us "oh, how nice it is to see such young boys visiting museums!" at which i wanted to laugh but i didn't. we left our jackets and bags in a creepy room down in the basement of which nix has a picture, then we walked up an enormous staircase with kitsch stuff made with sparkly other stuff hanging from the roof. yeah, i don't know either.
the museum was pretty, not so big, and had really cool roofs, of which nix has pictures as well. we saw lots and lots of extremely cool instruments, like a "double flute" which makes three sounds you can't alter (like bagpipes, but three sounds), while you can make whatever other notes with the other two flutes. it looks like five flutes glued together.
there also was this weird thing that looked like some sort of horn which ended in a monster face with its mouth open, there was mozart's FAIL test to enter some kind of music school here in bologna, and a painting of bach's 20th son, along with lots of castrati singers, tiny music books and huge encyclopedias of music, etc. etc.
we were almost on our way out when we noticed that we probably missed a good chunk of the museum. so we went back in and it was the biggest mistake OF OUR LIVES. this older guy, a volunteer for the museum, spotted us and decided to come give us a 101 class about the museum itself and music in general.
long story short: bach's 20th son is awesome, the museum itself is extremely awesome, so awesome the bill gates himself visited it, and it has a very rare marine.. string.. instrument.. thing, which looked fugly and i bet sounded even worse, and REAL music is only classical music and all the rest is destined to fall in the music oblivium after not too long. for example, if you're interested, the beatles will be unknown in 20-30 years time to the next generations, just like the 20s-30s jazz is completely unknown to us youngsters. apart from maria callas because she is apparently above all this and her star will shine forever and ever in the universe of awesome music.
of course it makes no sense to me, but i'll keep all of this in mind just in case the next generation won't know who the beatles are - in that case, we should have to give this guy the fame he deserves for this theory he has developed.
then we went to the university area, where i showed nix piazza verdi, which was unusually empty of drunk people and students just laying there for the fun of it. we wanted to go to the museum of ancient maps, but we found out its real name was actually "the museum of ancient maps, cannons, boats, medieval fortifications and a tiny bit of astronomy too". the maps were really, really cool, and nix has a picture of australia as pictured on an ancient globe. which means only part of australia.
there were plenty of places with funny names, and it was overall awesome.
that was only one room though.
the next room was medieval fortifications. we were all like " WTF?!" because a) it was unexpected and b) you couldn't really understand what those things were - there were like blueprints but made of wood (woodprints? brownprints?) all over the walls. i asked a guy who worked there about what those things were and he told us that they were probably fortifications but he didn't know and he wasn't sure. ... right. there we saw a very nice panting of a rare nothing, hanging of the wall. we were both really impressed by it.
next room was cannons. which was, to be honest, paintings of cannons on the wall and tiny toy cannons on a couple of shelves. BUT. there was a picture of cannonballs on the wall and we have like 34938493 pictures of it. it's basically one cannonball, and it shows all the different variations. by which i mean all the different sizes. how many were there? i think 16. nix knows it, he counted them, he liked it a lot and i would've bought him a reproduction of the print if only the museums had shops like they do in every other city! (note: the museums did not have shops apart from the music one, but it only like 3 things, of which nix bought one)
the next room was some weird thing about constellations and the history of the city of bologna. it was all touchscreens and they weren't really workind so that was disappointing. next room there was some sort of 3d prints on the wall representing i don't know what and a big sphere made out of tvs showing some chorus singing a very creepy song. i was really creeped out but nix liked it. bah, tourists are weird.
then there were boats, which were really nice! there were huge models. and also a box with spices. there weren't many though, but i have to say we didn't see the whole of it because there were people messing with a boat and it made nix uncomfortable because it looked like they were going to break it any second.
so we were about to leave and we noticed another room with some cool books. i showed you a couple pictures of it. we could touch them! they were really really old and dusty.
when we went to collect our stuff, the museum guy told us there was another part of the museums for us to see if we wanted to. about anatomy and physics. a girl warned us that it might have been a bit gross, but not so much. so we decided to go. BAD, BAD IDEA.
so basically half of it was FOETUSES. wax foetuses. foetuses in every position you can think of. uteruses with surgeons' hands in them. cut upen uteruses. deformed babies. polyphemus babies with their nose on their forehead. forceps used to capture wild babies. more uteruses. twin babies. and more stuff used to make babies be born (correct this sentence plz. i do not understand the use of the verb 'to be born'. i hate this verb.).
we were really, really grossed and took no pictures.
the next few rooms were about muscles, bones, organs and other tasty stuff. i was a little grossed there as well (about the muscles more than anything, like the diaphragm just, you know, hanging there looking like beef) but nix wasn't and i took a picture of him with some skeleton with bulgy eyes.
the other part was about stuffed animals (i don't know whether they were real or wax as well), and very exciting bits of rock, all guarded by a huge pope painted on a wall. then there were more bits of rock. over all, i think you could say that half of the museum was about bits of rock.
after that, we ate piadina in a place called 'pappappero', whose logo is a kangaroo! that was a very cool coincidence!
we spent a lot of time trying to figure out whether your 'lard' is what i mean for 'lard', and i found out yesterday that we have different word for lard and that pork fat that looks like butter, but you don't really know what 'lard' is (what we mean for lardo), which is like the disgusting version of bacon. i mean you eat it in slices anyway.
ANYWAY. nix decided the piadina was so delicious he wanted to bring some of it home, so he said, "i think that if i put some of this liquid cheese on my pants, i won't have to declare it when i get to australia and i will be able to bring it home and enjoy it once more". i was too busy giggling at this italian version of 'pimp mah pants' that i didn't notice my own piadina started dripping liquid... vegetables... (wtf? i still don't know what the hell it was. grilled vegetables shouldn't do that!) on my own pants. so we had matching pants and i was happy. nix wasn't really, because he kept checking his pants as we walked on, but at least he knew he had his fancy shoes at home so there was nothing to worry about.
then it was closing time for shops (i thought it normal, but apparently it's not in every country!) - they close at about 12.30/13 and open again at about 15. they basically have a lunch break during which they're closed. so we went to saint francis' square (piazza san francesco), which was on fire, and we sat there for a long time taking pictures and waiting till our arses were two blocks of ice. at that point we went to a tea shop, which was closed, and we waited outside for it to open, talking about primordial dwarves and conjoined twins and other fascinating things. nix bought some really tasty herbal tea and then we went home because we couldn't do anything else - all we could talk about and think of was TEA TEA TEA TEATEAOMGTEATEA.
so we went home, nix showed me his mad tea-making skillz, and davide had some too. it got quite late (6pm), and we had decided we would go out for dinner that night, all the five of us (nix, me, davide, fra and marica).
so checked lj, my email and other stuff while nix decided to enjoy a very italian nap. at about 7pm we left and we went to a pizzeria called totò, in front of which nix got almost run over giving me quite a scare, fact that almost ruined my evening because i got SO SCARED you have NO IDEA.
we had an enormous pizza, not very full of stuff but most definitely tasty, and talked about buttsecks, dildos, porn movies and octopus fetishes.
after dinner fra had to go to work, marica went home and so did davide, while nix and i went to an irish pub called 'the auld dubliner' (i might have posted about it at some point) where we couldn't find a decent table and had to sit on a barrel. nix had a white beer (I KNOW RIGHT), and i had my usual tennent's super, which was enough for me (after the other pint i had at dinner) to become slightly happier, so to speak. at some point our drinking night was ruined by some stupid dj having a stupid quiz game speaking very loudly and being generally very annoying, so we went home.
on the bus, i don't even remember why, nix started explaining to me the basic of cricket, which amused him because he never would've thought he'd have to explain such a commonly played game as cricket to anybody, ever. when we got home we turned the computer on and watched videos of cricket stuff, nix made me some nice drawings of cricket ... field... things, and even though i cannot remember 3/4 of the terms he taught me, i have to say that i do really understand cricket now, even though i am not able to call every thing by its name. but i'll get there!
we went to bed at about 1am, and again, i don't remember why, but he sang adam buxton's theme for the quantum of solace movie, which i posted about yesterday night, and that was about the funniest thing that i had ever heard in my life. so i couldn't stop giggling for a good while, and i think the 2 pints of beer helped there.
DAY THREE:
we woke up at about 9 o'clock even though the alarm was at 9.30. nix's flight was at 15.10, but he wanted to be there 2 hours prior, so we should've left the house by 12. instead of getting up and doing stuff, we spent the morning in bed and he taught me how to play a weird kind of sudoku that has no numbers in the grid. that was real fun, and i also got to write stuff on his sudoku book like hearts and other declarations of love.
we got up by 11, we had tea and tasted the delicious tiramisu', and noticed it was quite late. so we quickly got dressed and got out.
we stopped by the train station to have lunch. falafel, we thought. what could ever go wrong with a falafel, we thought?
first of all mine had yogurt in it while i said not to put it. then the guy defrosted the falafels right in front of me by putting them in a microwave (i mean, he picked them up from the freezer, really). then, it didn't really taste that good. at all.
even though i was quite sad that this had to be the last food memory nix had of italy, we caught the bus to the airport, and nix gave me some australian coins that i still have here in front of me. (♥) he also gave me ten euro cents which he told me are worth hundreds and hundreds of australian dollars. i believe him.
the airport part is sad so i won't go into that in details :( i have to say though that he did speak in his sexy irish accent before he left and that made me extremely happy. in my pants. he noticed my face was all red, heeee. what can i say, i'm not kidding when i say i love accents.
i took a couple of pictures of him going through security (i was behind a glass wall, it felt like a zoo or something) and i waved him goodbye with my invisible handkerchief.
i wrote him a text message while i was on the bus - or, well, i actually sent him a text he wrote on my cellphone the night before at the pub. it went like this:
"Nix is awesome! And i an a fish! I am really drunk and I'm passed out under the table. Because I am a lightweight italian that can't hold his drink."
he texted me back and wrote a "MATE" that i now can pronounce the australian way! (i'm not too good at it but i'm getting there. saying "australia" the australian way is way too difficult for me though!)
and that was the end of our love story D:
CONCLUSION:
nix is AWESOME. he kept telling me nice things! heee! apart from the whole "your face" that went on for the first two days, which resulted in my face being a fish and my face being some other unpleasant things, but that's okay! ♥
we had a fantastic time, i've seen things in my city i had never seen before (heh), and he boosted my confidence so much that my life will now be forever divided into "before nix" and "after nix".
THOUGHTS ON LANGUAGE:
it wasn't that hard to start speaking english right out of the blue, and it surprised me enough. i never got to a particularly "bad pronounciation" point like i thought i would (i thought i'd get tired of speaking english after a while!), even though i have to say my pronounciation was a tad bit crooked by the second day. i have no idea why, because it wasn't really "italian", it was just weird (and wrong!). it was a specific thing, which is words like "about", "now", "brown" and stuff like that. i think that would be the 'o-u' sound. i don't know where that came from, but nix could still understand me beyond my butchering of the english language so that was fine.
i did get really tired of speaking english on the first day. after we finished watching benjamin button and nix said something, i knew i had to answer in english, but my brain was all "STOP! STOP THIS NONSENSE! I AM TIRED! PLEASE SPEAK YOUR LANGUAGE! CANNOT COMPUTE! CANNOT COMPUTE!" but everything turned out fine eventually because i didn't get this feeling on the second night. perhaps it was just a feeling of general tiredness caused by all the excitement!
another thing is that i found it remarkably hard to call the restaurant to book a place. i usually plan my phone calls, which means i think of what to say before i actually make the call. and my brain kept thinking in english! and i would think half a sentence like "hello, i'd like to book..." and then go "NO! THINK IN ITALIAN!". i ended up not thinking about the phone call at all but i managed to speak italian. lol.
another thing, is compliments that i feel like writing because i love compliments: nix said i spoke english well, and davide said that if he didn't know any better, he would've thought i was a native english speaker when he heard me talk. to be honest, davide doesn't speak english so i don't really know if he'd be able to tell a bad accent, but whatever, right!
also, when we were on the bus or in other places were people could hear us talk, i got the same weird looks as nix, which made me think they didn't understand i was italian, which for me is a compliment.
and, after nix left and i told davide about how hard it was to switch from english to italian in the middle of conversation (to translate both ways), he told me that he had noticed i had an english accent *while speaking italian* while nix was here. i found that absolutely lulzworthy, mostly because i didn't notice at all! i think that has to do with the thinking in different languages. i mean, when i speak english, i think in english, when i speak italian, i think in italian (might sound obvious, but it really isn't!) so not only speaking different languages, but switching your brain's language options back and forth during a conversation might have caused a bit of confusion every now and then :P
apart from the few words i had started pronouncing weirdly, i have to say that i'm really glad with how i've done english-wise. it was my first time ever having long conversations with an english-speaking person, and i only had a few problems with words i didn't remember but nothing major at all (and sometimes i would not remember the words but when nix said them i did know them).
this gave me hope about my CAE exam in june!
that said, this is about the longest post i've EVER made in my entire LJ carreer. people who read the whole thing will get a prize!
and now, if you don't mind, i'm going to do something else!! i've been writing this for like AGES.
MATE!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2009-01-17 10:48 pm (UTC)it would me "more instruments used in delivery" or "birthing" or "the birthing process".
I CAN HAS PRIZE NAO??????? *bats eyelashes*
is this post locked (i can't be arsed checking!) . . . if not, i will link this on our blog. AND THEN MY PARENTS WILL READ ABOUT YOUR NAUGHTY EROTIC DREAMS! LOLOLOL!
no subject
on 2009-01-17 10:57 pm (UTC)i also just remembered that i forgot to put the bit about us going to the sexy shop and you wanting to buy a pink leather collar with a chain, but maybe it's better that way if your parents are going to read it!
PRIZE: ME. IN AUSTRALIA. NAO. check your front door
and call the police.no subject
on 2009-01-17 11:44 pm (UTC)oh noes! will you still be at my front door in 2 days? because i will be home on tuesday evening (melbourne time). <3
no subject
on 2009-01-17 11:58 pm (UTC)nooy! that's too late D: you will have to wait till september to collect your prize then D:
(this post is now unlocked btw, let me know about the other one!)
no subject
on 2009-01-18 10:13 am (UTC)september it is, then. *glompity glomp* <- that was a special STRONG MANLY MAN GLOMP for you.
p.s. "nooy!" HAHAHA! mockmockmock!
no subject
on 2009-01-18 10:25 am (UTC)yay manly glomps!!! you know, yesterday's topic in the house was how strong you look and how strong you probably are. i shared with them my glomps and wrestling experience and everybody was amazed by your super duper manly strength! i think they might want to join the nixwilliams fandom now.
*wrestles you in a well-not-so-strong-really way*
p.s. teehee! i like 'nooy'! it's cute!
no subject
on 2009-01-20 08:30 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-01-20 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-01-20 08:43 pm (UTC)o hai! i am in australia! it is warm and sunny and almost 8am. my body clock is fucked!
no subject
on 2009-01-20 08:49 pm (UTC)hai, weird summer in january! did you sleep at all tonight? i can't even begin to guess how long it'll take for you to get used to living 12 hours into the future!
no subject
on 2009-01-18 01:30 am (UTC)anyway, sounds like you two had fun. jolly good! :)
no subject
on 2009-01-18 10:32 am (UTC)your fantastic prize will be the picspam! and it is here!
http://savethewabbit.livejournal.com/177419.html
don't worry about wanting to look at his cute face, we're all stalkers of him here. i believe you will enjoy my website www.watchnixwilliams.com and all its sekrit webcams in his house once it's up and running!
we did have lots of fun - and he told me lots of nice things about you, too! i think we should be lj friends and share our love for nix.
no subject
on 2009-01-18 11:44 am (UTC)if you need a hand with the webcam installation, then i'd be happy to help. presuming i get invited back... but what nix doesn't know won't hurt him! but i am a bit worried. I tried to go to watchnixwilliams.com and it says "Address Not Found"-??!??!?! :O
but anyway, yes. lets be lj friends! in fact, i'm gonna friend you right now! :D
no subject
on 2009-01-18 01:00 pm (UTC)yay, new friend! welcome to my lj! \o/
this is possibly the strangest conversation i've ever had with a new friend, either on lj or in rl!
on 2009-01-19 02:36 am (UTC)yay! new friends! i hope you like crack, because that seems to be my main currency! :D
HAHAHAH!
on 2009-01-19 11:15 am (UTC)yay! i love crack! my journal kind of consists in me moping around about stuff, but hey, you can always skip my entries, i don't mind! most people do anyway, harr harr. i do occasionally post crack though - couldn't live without it!
your face
on 2009-01-20 08:44 pm (UTC)Re: your face
on 2009-01-20 08:49 pm (UTC)*wink wink*
and i also know what you did last night.
*triple wink*
Re: your face
on 2009-01-20 08:58 pm (UTC)Re: your face
on 2009-01-20 09:03 pm (UTC)MMM, I SMELL FAME AND MONEY IN THE AIR!