This mainly involved: smoking, drinking Wine in a Box, going to bars, going to school, eating pasta, and going to more bars.
This was mainly done with: Jon, a 30 year old from outside London (who turned out to have been on the same flight as me to Rome); Hadas, a 23 year old from Tel Aviv (who was lovely if somewhat confused but I put this down to her having seen real, gun-related action on the Gaza Strip during her national service – that would have a profound effect on anyone); Daan, 19, from Amsterdam, a very cute young man who had a fondness for all things rap related and a great way with words, many of them foreign; and August, a 19 year old Swede with a great line in indie-band fashion and a fantastic accent. I will remember the way he used to say, ‘Actually, I’m rilly rilly hungry right now’ for quite some time to come. And he used to say it quite frequently.
Thankfully we all liked a good meal and, indeed, a good drink, and as a result tried many of Rome’s finest hostelries, and also some Irish bars. What is it about Europeans and Irish bars? They freakin’ love them. Jon and I, being British, did not, so much. But we humoured them, and, since our first night out was actually St Patrick’s Day and we persuaded them to go to an Irish bar, we probably only had ourselves to blame.
On one memorable evening I actually hosted dinner at my place, treating everyone to an industrial vat of home made spaghetti carbonara (washed up with rather a lot of WIAB) and the ensuing jollity (to be fair, we weren’t actually making that much noise, it’s just that the building had absolutely NO soundproofing whatsoever) had the effect of rousing the downstairs neighbour. It was only 11pm but it was a schoolnight and he was clearly angered by our enjoyment. He came up the stairs, banged on the door, and, redfaced, fat and sweaty, ranted on about calling the police and didn’t we know some people had work tomorrow? I was too excited by the fact that my improving Italian meant I understood most of his threats and insults to be that alarmed, but it meant we had to decamp to the pub across the road which, as it was playing heavy metal all night, only added to the delirium of the evening.
