I was born and raised in a fairly small town called Fermo, a place with less than 40,000 inhabitants and lots of things not to do, right by the "Italian East Coast" (I made that up just now. Nobody has ever nor will ever call it like that).
After graduating high school, I moved to Bologna to study Communication Sciences (what does that even mean, anyway?).
The house whose room I rented was just plain weird, although in an enticing, if sometimes unsettling way. It was a pretty big apartment located in a very nice neighborhood, and yet not a single one of my roommates stayed there for more than a year.
That's right: every 12 months I would get 5 brand new roommates, each one coming from places I had mostly never heard of.
There was the two-meter tall Brazilian basketball player whom I later discovered had an identical twin.
The guy from Naples who grew "special plants" in a massive greenhouse in his own room.
The sweet Syrian who loved watching inexplicably terrible Egyptian prank shows.
The Italian-Argentinian raised in Miami who ate more pizzas at 4 am than I thought was humanly possible, and than he ate some more.
The Iranian who used to practice playing the violin just outside the bathroom while we were taking a shit, and the other Iranian who didn't.
The two shy Israelis who repeatedly peed in the clogged up bidet.
The usual complimentary bunch of ever-partying Spanish people, who almost got us all kicked out for throwing raucous bashes on week nights and also stole 5 shopping carts from the supermarket and a couple of bikes from the train station using massive pincers.
The cool French girl. The easygoing Basque. The two Turkish mavericks.
The two guys from up there in Trentino and the two form down there in Sicily.
The troublemaker from Modena who didn't want to do the wash-up nor pay the bills and that dude from Salerno who still owes me about 100 euros.
And then there was another Iranian who left after less that a month and that random young man who slept there for eight weeks, without telling anybody but one that he was even there.
That makes 22 of them, over the course of less than 4 years.
And most of them studied Engineering, God bless their souls.

But as the euphoria of those years now starts to wear off, I find myself asking: why the hell were they all leaving every year?
Was it the crappy floor tiles? Was it the old building structure and rundown furniture? (We did find a bat on our first day there, after all. Or I'd better say it found us).
Or maybe was it the fact that everything stopped working all the time (fridges, washing machines, heating system, hot water boiler, plumbing, you name it).
Plenty of reasons, actually, now that I think about it.
Still, I can't help but wonder: was it me? Was it? Why? Do I smell that bad? I am really nice and very well-mannered, so yeah, it must be the smell.

Please, come over here and help me find out.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I've been living in Rome for a few years now, by the way, and got myself another 30 roommates or so.
That brings the total to around 54 folks I've had to share an apartment with.

I've spent my whole adult life getting acquainted and sharing things with a horde of strange people from all over.
And I don't intend to stop anytime soon. I mean, why the hell should I?

Interests

I'm interested in lots of stuff and obsessed with just as much.
I have a lifelong obsession with cinema, live music, short stories and impossibly long books, stand-up comedy, US and UK television, North Korea (one of the most cartoonish dictatorships in the history of time). Plus some other stuff I now can't recall, so you can assume it's not that much important, and maybe it isn't, but you bet I'm obsessed with it as well.

• books
• movies
• music
• live music
• tv shows
• stand up comedy

Music, Movies, and Books

Do you have, like, 5-6 spare hours to have this conversation?

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Now I should probably tell you about that one time I caught a bat flying on my hallway.

I had just moved into my brand new and spacious apartment, where I had struck up an acquaintance with my very first roommate, Paolo. It was an early autumn afternoon and the sun was shining bright, as I absent-mindedly walked out of my room and into the corridor. Nothing much was going on at that point, except for some random bird I saw gliding awkwardly back and forth. Paolo was out, his door and window wide open.
I got into the kitchen to ate a ridiculous lunch meal (I believe it was a tuna can and a banana), which tasted like freedom and independence.
When Paolo came back with a girlfriend, I greeted him in a polite yet facetious way, as I was accustomed to.
We conversed briefly.
Finally, I asked:
"Is that your bird? I think it got out"
"What bird?", he replied with a puzzled gaze on his face.

Long story short, there was a fucking bat in the hallway.
After some screaming, my roommate ended up beating it with a broom and I was then given the task of disposing of the body in the garbage can, which I did.
'That is a very weird start to living on my own', I thought to myself. And if you think the weirdness has faded out since then, think again. Like, not even close.

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Monaco, Netherlands, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States, Vatican City State

Countries I’ve Lived In

Italy

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