Cleaning habits.

Today (Sunday) we had another nice lunch together (again „saved“ the environment by using plastic plates and cups) and I invited my friend Anna from Finland to come over. We had a good time and an interesting conversation in clean! Italian, and my flatmates we're pretty astonished how well both of us participated in that conversation.

I feel like the Italian way of life has become my way of life already. I've started  to think in Italian, write shopping lists in Italian,... and I had a dream about the congiuntivo (strange to say...).


Tonight we also cleaned the flat. In Germany, I was one of the cleanest out of my flatmates (well, I was one of those who actually cleaned the kitchen and not only left behind their mess – here's proof: I won two of two annual dish washer emptying-contests).

I had thought that, because of the Italian mentality, a flat shared by students would probably be a big chaos („casino“ in Italian). Instead, they clean it so often that it's too much for me. Twice a week, it's someone's turn to put a huge load of chemicals into a bucket, put a little water on top of that and then clean kitchen, bathroom and floors with that awfully smelling mixture. If you drank a zip of it, you'd probably die immediately (so instead of suffering a slow and painful death from sleeping in an Italian bed, I'd just suggest to swallow a bit of our cleaning water if you're interested in committing suicide in Italy).

So yea, today was my turn to clean everything. Reluctantly, I only put half of the normal dose of cleaning detergent in the water... but I wasn't cautious enough, one of my flatmates saw what I had done, told me that with this little bit of „soap“ I could never get the floor clean (come on, it's only been cleaned with that acid two days ago!). So I accepted my destiny and put more teratogenic cleaning substance in my cleaning bucket (I bet they have to exchange the stupid bucket every month because it gets eaten up by the cleaning substance).

Different people have different ways of cleaning: Alessandra always does it without anyone noticing, she is just so quick and quiet. When Donato cleans, everyone within a distance of a mile knows he's doing so – he should get a spot in some movie, it so dramatic watching him singing and dancing with the vacuum cleaner or a sponge in his hands. One time, I thought something horrible had happened, because I heard someone whining and screeching, as if out of terror. But it was just Donato cleaning the bathroom.



Here's an update on my status of health: ;-) my allergy (against dust mites) has become soo much better, I don't take medicine against it anymore and I'm fine. Thanks to the aggressive cleaning substance!

The never-ending thunderstorms have finally accomplished their diabolic goal: I have caught a cold. Sore throat, headache. Oh well, moving on to Bari (where the sun always shines) soon.

Oh, the neighbors have again turned off the internet and I cannot post this before tomorrow. Oh well.