Feeling guilty

Hey all,

It turns out that my morning teacher, in addition to speaking Italian, English, Spanish, and God knows what else, is also trying to learn German. I can see the attraction – it would be nice to be able to speak the one language on the planet that sounds even more sinister than Russian. Have you ever heard someone say “I love you?” in German? I did once, years ago, and I thought it was a death threat. Or a promise to invade my country. Anyway, because she wants to learn German she has been spending a lot of time with the English contemporary dancer who is in my afternoon class, and who is really German. I think at some point in the last 24 hours the English/German dancer said to my morning teacher something along the lines of “Do you realise that B spent all yesterday morning in a simmering state of psychotic murderous ultra-rage?” Which sounds bad enough in English – one can only imagine how it was perceived when expressed in German. So, today, out of the blue, my morning teacher sat down beside me, made sure I had some idea what was going on in English for a change, even said she knew it was difficult for me as an English speaker with so may Spaniards in the class: the upshot of this is that if I still didn't understand much today, I at least had a fairly clear idea as to what it was that I didn't... I guess the moral of that story is: “Thank God for globe-trotting German-English professional contemporary dancers who are trying to get some excitement into their otherwise mundane [!!] lives by learning Italian in Florence.”

I feel quite guilty about it now, because the young Spaniard who was bugging me so much yesterday with his non-stop talking is one of those exuberant, extroverted, friendly and genuinely helpful types who you shouldn't get annoyed with, but with whom I usually do, before feeling really bad about it. He is also a bit of genius with the piano – there is a grand in our morning classroom and he will jump on to it and start rattling out Listz for half an hour from memory – which is why he can start nattering on to random women from the school in broken Itanglish over lunch and they sit there and bat their eyelids at it (pictured)...

Amused myself in class today when we had to describe what the people in our country typically eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I did my best to say that Australians generally only eat kangaroo meat that we find by the side of the road after trucks run them over in the desert. Based on the expressions of horror I think I got half-way there – people will believe almost anything about Australians. In Rome I met a good-natured young American fellow who saw the desktop wallpaper on my laptop (K, standing on the St. Kilda road bridge in front of the Yarra at dusk). “Where's that?” he asked. I told him it was Melbourne. “Whoa, it's kind of like a real city, with buildings and stuff!” he said.

German opera singer has gone out on some school organised tour of medieval Florence tonight, mainly to meet girls I think. He is not having a whole lot of luck, the poor thing. This may be because he is spreading his interest in women (in general) a little more broadly than is flattering to the individual vanity of any actual woman, but I suspect the real reason is that he is a basso opera singer. This means that he invariably plays the baddies – has spent a couple of decades leaping from the shadows, stabbing the hero's best friend in the back before abducting the heroine and generally being evil and menacing for a couple of acts until the hero (after an appropriate amount of soul searching) dispatches him towards the end while in the process of rescuing the girl. Consequently a thin veneer of vague melodramatic wickedness now clings to him and he can't do much about it. Live update: he has just come home and is practising evil basso singing in the kitchen!

Photos. In addition to the mating ritual (note the manner in which our exuberant Spaniard flaunts the banana), there is a picture of the wall of a church where I often go to have lunch because the crowds are thin and because of the shade. Also, what passes for a children's playground in Florence – but good enough to do pull-ups on. Finally, a picture of the box of Partagas I bought yesterday to cheer myself up, for about 185$AU, which is pretty good, even though this particular cigar is (prepare yourselves for the horror) *machine-made* – all the good ones are in the shop that is closed for the month.

Cheers, B.

PS - charging my camera battery for the first time since I left. Impressive.