To be honest, I wasn’t sure about writing that post at all. That’s what took me so long this week actually. We’re going down my rabbit hole because especially in the first weeks the lockdown situation felt a lot like a depressive phase I had some years ago. And trying to find activities while staying home is the same everywhere, right? But I am much better now and since lockdown is different here instead of home I decided to write about my coping strategies here in Bologna. And don’t worry, I only write about the good stuff. And you get links to some of my Instagrams Posts! (The featured image above is actually from a travel to Prague, but I found it quite fitting to the secret main topic of that posting.)
Like I already told you, during the first week of lockdown I was moving between two places. And the experience was actually quite differently. First I was in the Hostel and even nobody was supposed to travel, we had some changing guests, because people were stuck in Bologna and so on. So I had some changes in talks and my online-courses finally started and it wasn’t really boring. We also did twice movie night and I watched some italian movies with the other guests. One movie was called Dogman and is about a guy having a dog salon and get involved with criminal stuff because of a neighbour of his. The other one is called Nuovo Cinema Paradiso and is about a guy who started working in a Cinema when he was young and became friends with the old guy working there, felt in love with a woman in his teenager years, got his heart broken, went away, came back for the funeral of the old man… yeah, you get the main idea about the drama I think. It was interesting to see that movies, especially when you’re together with other people and can’t change the program. I would have never made it through the second one alone. It’s an old movie from 1988 and there was really disturbing stuff in the romance. Dear guys, when you somehow think to follow the big romantice gesture there… don’t. Nowadays we call that stalking and woman mostly don’t fall in love with creeps waiting under their window for 100 days. So when she say “No, I don’t love you.” that IS the end of your story.
I also started in the Hostel with my main coping strategy but on a much smaller scale: cooking. Since I moved in the new place my cooking ambitions grow rapidly. Already after my arrival I started to cook more than I did for years, since I have more time and the fresh ingredients are more seducing… but here I went crazy. The Meet-Up group I told you in the last post, also decided to open another group for cooking and there we do some challenges and share some recipes. So I get new ideas quite regulary. I already did from my Italian dishes bucket list: Gnocchi, Spaghetti Carbonara, Risotto di fragola, Risotto con pomodori, Risotto con funghi, experimented with melanzane (eggplant, but I love the word Melanzane), Spaghetti con salmone… and I also did some other favorites like Shakshuka, Falafel, fried potatoes, salad with chicken…. You see, I have quite some fun. I made photos from some stuff and put it on Instagram, you’ll see the posts at the end of the post.
Today I baked. Colomba Pasquale, a traditional Italian cake in form of a dove. Actually when you google it, it doesn’t look like a dove, except someone explain to you that two of the knobs are wings. But since I didn’t found the form for it anyway I tried to form it by hand and it went pretty good. I hope it taste as well as it looks like, but since I want to share it with my flatmate, I need to wait.
What else do I do here? Actually not that much out of the extraordinary. I study, I text and call my friends and spent a lot of time on the balcony, enjoying the sun. Sometimes I watch some tv-shows or movies, but my interest in them is very low (except for Casa del Papel, but this was an one day-pleasure. :-D). I do some writing, but not for earning money (even I probably should do that), more to release some stress. Sometimes I dance for an hour or two. And that basically it is. So, nothing left for me to say at this point, except for give you the links to my Instagram postings of my food:
Travel, learn, share, repeat... 