Vita Bolognese

Ok so my apartment isn’t a palace. It’s huge, 8 students live there, and it’s falling a part…a bit. We don’t have internet or a landline, the fridge makes a weird squeaky noise, some of the tiles in the bathroom by the toilet are broken and the hot water can sometimes be, at best, sporadic. We have probably five coffee makers, two fridges, two bathrooms, a washer but no drier, and ONE shower. The doors from time to time when they open and close sound more like car crashes than squeaky doors. There was one light in my room and the rod in my closet broke the first time I hung my coat up on it.

Whatever. Here’s why I love it.

The people I live with are absolutely amazing, all masters students who have already studied law and are doing a sort of Law and Economics program that takes them two a number of European universities where they study for one or two semesters before moving on. Needless to say they are a pretty smart and tight knit bunch; it’s really nice landing somewhere where there is at least, a small sense of community. We are a pretty mixed bunch of guys and girls coming from, including me, the States, Sweden, Austrian, Italy and India. They are always really nice and have invited me out a couple of times with them and their friends, all of whom have always been very welcoming and interested in talking, of which there is an Irish guy who has become a fast friend (A quick tangent…and excuse me for writing as I think…but..I’m still getting used to partying European style, but rest assured guys, we’re better dancers on the other side of the Atlantic…and we know how to make drinks! Let’s just say that my Long Island Iced Tea that I had the other night was made with…iced tea.)

What I find the most hysterical is how, although English is by means none of these peoples’ mother tongue, they still come out saying some of the most random and absolutely hysterical things you could imagine.

For example.

Another guy from McGill and I were sitting at a table talking to a few of the Swedes around dinner time. It was pretty relaxed and we were enjoying our wine and whatever food I had managed to find at the supermarket that day. Out of nowhere, after kind of looking at my friend from McGill inquisitively for a few seconds, the Swedish guy asks him….

“Wait are you like… of the Fab 5?”

Come on!! So funny! Anyway, maybe not for you, but all their little quirks crack me up.

I find as well that there are some hidden treasures in our apartment, like, for example, the table in our…err.. dining room is actually a pasta making table, meaning that it has a special wood board that you can pull out from the middle and a very large rolling pin that you can use to make fresh pasta.

Another quick story, the same Swedish guy that identified my friend as one of the Fab 5 took a cooking course to make lasagna Bolognese from scratch. For one of our apartment mates birthday, another Swedish girl, he made it….everything from scratch. I helped him out a bit, making sure the kitchen was clean and doing little odd jobs as they came up. It was pretty cool to watch it all come together and see the care that he put into making something that, although you can buy it frozen and heat it up in 20 minutes, actually takes a lot of work.

So anyway, it was dinner time, time to put this thing together. I was hanging out in my room getting ready to brave putting together an Ikea lamp (after, of course, an incredibly overwhelming and stupefying trip to Ikea that day) with my roommate in the room. The Swedish guy knocks on the door.

“Hey, so I’m putting together the lasagna now.”
“Ok, so do you need help or anything.”
“Not really….but you guys could... keep me company...you know... if you wanted…”

All this stuff makes me smile so much, you have no idea.

Needless to say, the place may not be the best, but the people inside make it worthwhile. Hope this is a pretty good window into what life in the apartment is like. Little by little, everything is coming together.